:mwm^
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
PRESENTED BY
PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID
GAME AND BIED PRESERVERS
LONDON : PRINTED BY
5POTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
GAME PEESEEVEES AND
BIED PEESEEVEES
WHICH ABE OITE FRIENDS?
BY
GEOKGE FEANCIS MORANT
LATE CAPTAIN 12TH IIOYAL LAXCERS : MAJOR THE CAPE MOUNTED RIFLEMEN'
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1875
All ri'/hls reserved
Kit
TO
SIE THOMAS MILLES RIDDELL, BART.
OF STRONTIAX, ARGYLLSHIRE
LATK OF THE 7TH DRAGOOX GUARDS
A KIND FRIEND AND A GOOD NEIGHBOUR
%\t %xii\ox bebitatcs Ms Xiiik ^ook
IN REMEMBRANCE OF PLEASANT TEARS SPENT AMONG CHARMING
SCENES WITH WHICH SIR T. M. RIDDELL HAS BEEN
FAMILIAR FROM CHILDHOOD
JusiOR Unitkd Service Clue, Londox
June 17, 1875
PEEFACE.
Ix whatever part of the world the author has
found himself, Birds have furnished an endless
source of amusement to him.
It was therefore with great pleasure that he
heard that the subject of their preservation was
to be brought before Parliament, and he read
with interest the Eeport of the Evidence given
before the Select Committee appointed in 1873,
to enquire into the advisability of extending the
protection of a close season to certain wild
birds.
But no one can read this evidence without
noticing how little the subject of the preserva-
VI 11 PREFACE.
tion of birds is understood, nor, we should
think, witliout wondering whether some of tlie
naturahsts, who appear as witnesses, are not
wolves in sheep's clothing, who, far from really
wishing to see all beautiful and useful birds
protected by law and increasing in numbers,
care little if they are nearly exterminated, pro-
vided they can carry out certain theories of
their own.
The Eeport of the proceedings of this Com-
mittee is printed in a folio volume, and in every
case in this little book, where the author has
quoted the opinion of any of the witnesses, he
has cited the very words used in the printed
Eeport.
While we know that the rent which our
estates return, and the pleasure of living on
them to many people, depend on the numbers
of certain birds, and the productiveness of our
farms and gardens on the presence of others,
the inhabitants even of civilised countries, with
PREFACE. IX
few exceptions, have, up to the present timq,
killed their birds, or allowed them to be killed
in their breeding season ; just as the Indian and
Kaffir boys who are idhng about the villages in
Asia and Africa kill all they can, on every day
in the year ; and it seems to be only now dawn-
ing upon some of us that this is not much more
rational than to allow our cattle and sheep to
be treated in the same manner.
The author's own opinions are formed from
pursuing and collecting birds over a great part
of India, and for some years in South Africa.
He has resided of late years in the wildest
part of the Highlands of Scotland ; and having
had the sole right of shooting over more than
100 square miles of country, he has, with the
greatest satisfaction, watched the increase in re-
turn for the protection bestowed upon them, of
all the birds whose presence upon our property
adds most to its value.
If this httle book should induce a single
X PREFACE.
reader, who now neglects his birds, to extend
to them this protection which they so much re-
quire, the author will be well repaid for the
trouble of writing it.
The Junior United Service Club,
London : Jime 1875.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. On Bikds generally, and the Report of
THE Committee 1
II. The Balance of Nature . . . . 13
III. The Grouse Disease .... 25
ly. Birds of Prey . . . ... .38
y. The Eagle, the Buzzard, and the Hen-
harrier ...... 51
yi. The Falcon 59
yil. The Sparrow-Hawk, the Merlin, the
Kestrel, and the Owl . . . 76
yill. The Raven, the Crow, the Magpie, the
Jay, and the Rook . . . . 84
Xll CONTENTS.
CHAPTKR PAGE
IX. The Fox 94
X. The Polecat, the Stoat, the Weasel,
AND the Hedgehog . . . . 108
XI. The Rat and the Cat . . . .117
XII. The Grouse 129
XIII. The Black Ge,ouse and the Partridge . 144
XIV. The Pheasant . . , . . 158
XV. Pheasant Rearing 171
XVI. The Wood-Pigeon akd House-Sparrow 185
XVII. How to Preserve all Birds . . 193
GAME PEE SEE VERS AND
BIED PEESEEVEES.
CHAPTEE I.
ox BIKDS GEXEEALLY AXD THE REPORT OF
THE COMMITTEE.
When we find nation after nation, mailing
laws for the protection of wild birds, we
may be sure that there is a growing feeling
that this is absolutely necessary. A very
cursory glance over the mass of evidence
given before the Select Committee appointed
in 1873 to enquire into the advisability of
extending the protection of a close season
to certain wild birds not included in the
Z GAME PKESERYERS AXD BIRD rRESER^T:RS.
Wild Birds Preservation Act of 1872 will
show how useful these creatures are to man,
and this evidence may be considered a sum-
mary of all that is known about birds up to
the present time.
If the subject were more generally under-
stood, every owner or occupier of land would
be a bird preserver, and consequently a game
preserver, and no laws for their protection
would be necessary.
It is no exaggeration to state that if birds
could be exterminated our fields and gardens
would in a few years scarcely repay the expense
of cultivation, or, as Mr. Cordeaux expresses it,
' farming would be practically impossible with-
out birds,' while the extermination of our game
birds would cause a loss of an income of many
thousands a year to our landowners, and a loss
of hundreds of tons of delicious food to the
general public.
Leaving out of the question for the moment
the Grallatores and Natatores, all harmless and
BIRDS AND REPOET OF COMMITTEE. 3
beautiful, and many of tliem excellent as food
for man, and the few birds which are cannibals
and eat each other, every mouthful which a bird
eats may almost be said to be either an insect
or a seed, so when we have protected the seeds
which w^e value they are incessantly destroying
either a farmer's and gardener's live enemies or
the weeds which clog his ground.
Few people have owned the smallest garden
without finding out the cruel damage which
many sorts of grubs and insects commit. Many of
the gentlemen who appear before this Committee
give most interesting information about insects,
their depredations, their powers of reproduction,
&c. Mr. Groome Napier tells us, ' Some, such
as the white ant, lay 40,000,000 eggs, laying
them at the rate of 60 a minute. Alegrodes
proletella lays 200,000, a species of mutilla
80,000 a day. The queen of the hive bee is
capable of laying 50,000 in a season ; the
female wasp 30,000 ; various species of coccus
B 2
4 GAME PRESERVEES AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
from 2,000 to 4,000 ; some moths 1,000. Most
insects have two generations in a year, some
have 20, while others take seven years from the
time the egg is laid until their natural death in
a perfect state.'
'The beetles (coleoptera) are immensely
numerous as regards species. They live from
three to four years in the larvse state. The
first year they do not do a great amount of
damage. Tlie second year they attack the
roots of all plants within their reach ; they
often ruin the crops of corn, lucerne, &c., on
which man depends for food. In a field of
29 acres in France, 43,200 larvse were found ;
quite sufficient to destroy the entire crop during
the season.'
Mr. Muller gives the names of 28 insects
that are always found attacking the apple-tree
alone.
Mr. Harting quotes from a French work,
that ' out of 504 grains of rape only 296 were
healthy ; the remainder were eaten or destroyed
BIRDS AND EEPORT OF COMMITTEE. 5
by insects. There was a consequent loss in oil
of 32-8 per cent. In a harvest which pro-
duced 180/., it was necessary to calculate a
loss of 108/., which, could it have been
avoided, would have produced 288/.'
Mr. Warner states, ' Some years ago the
damage done to the seed growing by small
birds induced my father to have all the birds
destroyed that he could. The result was that
we had no leaves on the gooseberry trees at all,
and we lost all our crops of fruit entirely ; ' and
many similar instances are given.
The insects that are vegetable feeders are
partly kept in check by other insects which
prey upon them, and it is an interesting fact
that these insects are not eaten by birds. This
is mentioned by the Eev. G. J. Wood. There
is an ichneumon fly that lays its egg on the
body of a live caterpillar, and when it hatches
it certainly eats him to death. It is to be
hoped the unfortunate caterpillar does not
know the fate that awaits him. He is much in
6 GAUE PEESERYEKS AND BIED PRESERVEES.
the position of a human being afflicted with in-
curable cancer.
But it is on the birds that we must mostly
depend for help, and how much they help may
be imagined when the Eev. F. 0. Morris tells
us *that a rook requires, at a very low esti-
mate, one pound of food a week, and that of
this nine-tenths are insects and worms ; so that
in one season 100 rooks will destroy 4,780 lbs.
of insects and larv^. On this calculation a
rookery of 10,000 rooks will consume in one
year 468,000 lbs. or 209 tons of worms, insects,
and their larvge.'
Mr. Groome Napier states that one of the
most destructive grubs is the larva of the cock-
chafer, and that the rook and starling make it a
speciahty to eat them ; while Mr. F. Bond took
out of the crop of a cock pheasant 444 grubs
of the crane fly, out of the crop of a partridge
a handful of agrotis segetum, the turnip moth,
and teaspoonfuls of wire worms out of larks,
plovers, starlings, and rooks.
BIRDS AXD EEPORT OF COMMITTEE. 7
The last-named gentleman gives two in-
stances of crops being saved by starlings.
As regards the seed-eating birds, these gen-
erally feed their young upon insects, while if
we reflect that every seed which they eat, ex-
cept those which man actually sows himself in
his fields and gardens, will probably grow up as
a weed, their services in destroying these are
enormous. We have then only to protect our
seed-beds for a few days after sowing, and our
fruits and corn crops for a few weeks when ripe
before we gather them ; and these birds are
equally our benefactors all the rest of the year.
Yet we very generally destroy them because
they cannot resist our delicious fruits and
the golden harvest which we spread before them
so temptingly. Surely tliis is unworthy of the
nineteenth century, and after all that we now
know of their habits. Our corn crops must be
protected by bird-boys, and the expense of doing
this effectually should not be grudged. The
poor little urchin we so often see, not so very
8 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERAiaiS.
mucli larger than an unusually fine cock-sparrow
himself, furnished with a saucepan and stones to
rattle together, is not sufficient. Lads must be
employed old enough to be entrusted with guns,
and they must shoot some of the birds at this
time of the year, as they soon become cunning
enough to disregard a noise which experience
teaches them is ' Vox et pra3terea nihil.'
Our very large gardens can only be protected
in the same way. Mr. Meyers tells the Com-
mittee he has thirty or forty acres of gooseberries
and strawberries alone. He adopts this plan,
and protects all birds as much as possible during
the rest of the year. In smaller gardens netting
is most efiectually used. String netting is sold
now at ^d. the yard, and even wire netting is
now very cheap. We grudge no expense to
fence our gardens securely against the beasts of
the field, and need not grudge a small outlay to
make them secure at certain times against the
fowls of the air. With our seed-beds protected
by wire guards, which can be moved from bed to
BIRDS AND REPORT OF COMMITTEE. y
bed as required, and our strawberries, goose-
berries, &c., protected by nets stretched over
neat wooden frames, we could welcome every
bird wliicli would visit our garden, certain tliat
whether he eat seed or insect he was doing us
good service. In fact, we may lay it down as
a rule that the only bird that really injures
man is the bird which kills another bird.
The evidence about the beautiful ' bullfinch '
is most conflicting. Some gentlemen maintain
that he eats the buds and destroys all the fruit ;
others that he only picks the bud for the sake of
the grub which would otherwise destroy it. If
a few gooseberry bushes were carefully netted
down during the three weeks in which he is seen
picking the buds, and their produce accurately
compared with that of the bushes to which he
had access, this question would be set at rest.
An estabhshed fact is worth any amount of
theory. If he is in pursuit of the grub the
remedy is often as bad as the disease. Four
years in succession he stripped our gooseberry
10 GAME PRESEEYERS AND BIRD TRESERYERS.
buslies of their buds, and we had not a single
ripe gooseberry. We would protect the trees,
not destroy this pretty little creature.
No one can read the proceedings of this
Committee without being struck with the pa-
tience with which, without partiality, faYour, or
affection, they elicited all possible information
from the twenty -nine gentlemen who appeared
before them.
Or we should think without ag^reeinf^ with
then^ report, and considering it highly desirable,
1. That the protection of certain wild birds
named in the schedule of the Wild Birds Pro-
tection Act be continued.
2. That all other wild birds be protected
from March 15 to August 1, proYided that
owners or occupiers of lands and persons de-
puted by them liaYC permission to destroy such
birds on lands owned -or occupied by them.
But the public are left to find out for them-
selYes how best to carry out this recommendation
— whether to protect all these birds it is neces-
BIEDS AND EEPORT OF COMMITTEE. 11
sary for man to kill any wild creatures himself
or not ; and wlien we see how widely so many
gentlemen differ in their opinions we cannot
help feeling how httle practical natural history
is understood.
It is not the number of inches which a bird
measures from the tip of its beak to the tip of
its tail which we want to know, nor even the
colour of its eggs, but whether its presence on
our land is an advantage to us or not.
Many naturalists tell this Committee that our
gamekeepers are ignorant and cruel, and do
more harm than good.
Then quite a number believe in a state of
things called the 'Balance of Nature,' with
which man should never interfere.
We will examine this view of the subject in
the next chapter.
Mr. A. Ellis would seem to belong to tliis
school. On 1,400 acres he allows ' nothing to
be destroyed except the grey rat.' These
gentlemen all wait until the birds and beasts
12 GAME FRESERYERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
of prey have fed, and tlien humbly accept as
man's portion the crumbs which fall from
these creatures' tables.
Some gentlemen give the Committee their
theory of the cause of that grievous calamity,
the grouse disease. Perhaps this will interest
some people.
Then all our birds and beasts of prey are
mentioned, and all our game birds, and some
interesting information is given about the
wood-pigeon and house-sparrow.
13
CHAPTER 11.
THE BALANCE OF NATURE.
The part which beasts and birds of prey had
to play in the scheme of creation was clearly
to reduce the numbers of the creatures they
preyed upon ; and though at first this may
seem a cruel arrangement, it is difiicult to see
how any other could have been invented,
unless each bird and animal had been created
to die suddenly after a certain time, like an
eight-day clock which has run down. Most
animals' powers of reproduction are so great,
evidently with a view of directly or indirectly
affording food to man, that but for some such
check before the appearance of man upon the
scene, they would have crowded each other
cut, and have died miserably of starvation.
14 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
But when man appears and assumes his domi-
nion over the beasts of the field and the fowls
of the air, the mission of these murderers and
cannibals is at an end. They disappear before
him all over the world, and it is worthy of remark
that all the creatures which man feeds upon
increase and prosper in a wonderful manner ;
the protection he gives them by destroying
their natural enemies so far out-balancing the
injury he inflicts upon them by killing them
himself when he requires them.
The sheep was doubtless a rare animal
"before he was used as food by man, and only
maintained his existence because his warm
woollen coat enabled him to live at an altitude
where but few beasts of prey cared to follow
him, while now he is one of the most nume-
rous and one of the happiest animals in the
world. Since sheep-farming has become gene-
ral at the Cape of Good Hope, the jackal,
which was so plentiful in 1850 that the 7th
Dragoon Guards imported a pack of English
THE BALANCE OF NATURE. 15
fox-hounds to liimt them, and gave sport that
is still remembered with pleasure, has entirely
disappeared. During a residence there of
some years we but once even heard one.
The first thing that the farmer does in every
part of the world, if he wishes his sheep to
increase, is to kill the animals that would kill
them in the breeding season ; and the first
thing that gentlemen have been in the habit
of doing; who wished to see beautiful and
useful birds increase has been to take care
that no bird or beast should molest them
during their breeding season. The twenty-
nine gentlemen who came to give evidence
before this Committee all agree that our birds
ought to have a close time when they should
be protected by law, but several of these
witnesses, the Eev. Mr. F. 0. Morris, the
Eev. Mr. Tristram, Mr. E. Gray, all well-
known naturalists, and others, followers of a
school of which the late Mr. Waterton may be
said to have been the founder, are most
16 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
anxious to protect at tlie same time the very
birds which will inevitably destroy the harm-
less birds in countless thousands, and during
their breeding season — to go back to the
state of things that existed before man inter-
fered, — and they maintain that while all his
success and his very existence depend on his
having interfered in the animal and vegetable
world, in his having destroyed creatures that
were noxious to him, and having protected
creatures that were useful to him, in the bird
world a state of things exists called the balance
of nature, with which he ought never to inter-
fere. Mr. W. C. Angus thinks, 'as a rule,
that Nature, if left to herself, will fairly pre-
serve the balance.' But this will be the
balance that existed before man appeared.
Is it likely to be what is now required ?
As a sinc^le instance that the balance which
Nature establishes is not the balance among
birds which is useful to man, any more than
among beasts, we may mention that she loves
THE BALANCE OF NATURE. 17
the worthless hoodie crow much more than she
loves the grouse which fetches bs. a brace in our
markets. . In 1864, on one large estate nearly
400 crows were killed, and at that time there
were hardly 100 grouse on the whole property.
In 1873 nearly 900 grouse were killed, and
about 40 crows. Her arrangement in Scotland
of lots of crows and hardly any grouse is no
more profitable to Man than her South African
arrangement before referred to, when jackals
were howling in every wood, and the mutton-
giving, wool-bearing sheep were represented by
a few creatures whose tails were heavier than
their fleeces.
Mr. Scott Skirving states ' that no bird on
earth would be a nuisance if man had not in^
terfered with them.'
Then why should the wolf or any other
animal ? But it is difficult to see how man is
to exist or to exercise his dominion over living
creatures without interfering ; or, as Dr. Giinther
expresses it, ' Man's task is to interfere with the
c
18 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
natural condition of things so as to turn every-
thing to his advantage.' The whole of this
last-named gentleman's evidence is most in-
teresting, and he takes a very wide view of the
subject.
Even Lord Lilford, who is a sportsman,
seems to believe in this balance in nature, and
states, ' My view is if we allowed the hawks to
increase and take their share of the small birds,
we should get about the right balance.'
But this is in answer to a question about
the sparrows. We should think that a gentle-
man who buys a fine Highland property, and
then leaves the hawks to decide what number of
grouse should breed upon it in every season,
does not act much more wisely than a farmer
would, who on settling in Austraha allowed the
wild dogs to decide what number of ewes should
breed on his land every year.
But how is it possible that these gentlemen,
who know something of natural history, and
who advocate a close time for every bird, can
THE BALANCE OF NATURE. 19
fail to see that what they Avoiild get would be a
close time for no bird, except, since ' hawks will
not pick out hawks' eyes,' for the five or six sorts
of birds of prey which still infest this country ?
By what stretch of the imagination can the
grouse, which so gallantly ran the gauntlet of
our guns in the autumn, be said to enjoy a close
time in the spring, when they are being killed
and torn to pieces every day from March to
August by the peregrine falcon ? Or how can
this be said of the birds whose songs dehght us,
and who do us such good service in our gardens,
while we allow them to be carried off before our
eyes every day ? But the more carefully we have
read all this mass of evidence, the more clear it
seems to us that at the present time the game
preserver is the only bird preserver, the only
real friend all our bh-ds have ; and any lady
who resides on a really well preserved estate
may rest assured that ten larks, blackbirds, and
thrushes are singing to her every summer even-
ing as she walks through the fields and woods,
c 2
20 GAME rKESERYEKS AXD BIED PRESERVERS.
for every one that she would hear were the owner
of this property to listen to the advice of certain
naturalists and send away his cruel keepers,
leaving the balance in nature to adjust itself.
It is a great mistake to imagine that man
drives birds away by cultivating the surface of
the earth. He feeds hundreds in feeding him-
self, and they are infinitely more numerous in
our gardens and on our farms than in the
primeval forest where his foot never penetrates,
or on the great fertile plains where he has not
yet turned the earth.
On a stormy November day in the High-
lands of Scotland, after walking for hoiu:s on
uncultivated ground and scarcely seeing a bird
except a few black game or an occasional wood-
cock or snipe, on coming to a stubble field,
should it be only of six or eight acres in extent,
we always find it ahve with birds of all sorts ;
wild ducks, curlews, oyster catchers, gulls, rooks,
crows, and clouds of small birds will have assem-
bled from all the country round.
THE BALAJSrCE OF NATURE. 21
As Sir D. Wedclerburn states, if we wish
birds to increase, ' improved conditions of exist-
ence are even more important than protection.'
It is when Man supphes both that he obtains
really great results, and in no part of the world
mth which we are acquainted can any bird or
beast, except the Eaptores and Carnivora, be
said to enjoy a close time for breeding unless
Man interferes and procures for them this price-
less boon. But it is not by making laws which
bind only his fellow-men that he can do this.
Man's non-interference was Mr. Waterton's plan,
audit is to say ' peace where there is no peace.'
We can see the working of this system any day,
not on a little park of 300 acres, but on thousands
of miles of country in Asia and Africa, and
until quite lately on hundreds of square mUes
in the Highlands of Scotland, where popula-
tion is very scanty and where no one thought of
wasting a charge of powder by shooting a bird,
or of spending his time in looking for birds'
nests.
22 GAME PRESEEYERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
We read somewhere that a member of one
of the French Assembhes once made a very
long speech in favour of the abohtion of capital
punishment, dwelling long on its being the
sacred duty of all men to respect human life.
He was answered in a few words by another
member, who agreed with all he had said about
its being all men's duty to respect human life,
but he suggested, ' Que messieurs les assassins
commencent' Man must lay down the law and
enforce it, that the bird or beast which sheds
birds' blood, in the pleasant spring and summer
months, by man must his blood be shed ; or the
beautiful and useful birds which all these gen-
tlemen, whose evidence we have been reading,
appear so anxious to protect cannot possibly
enjoy the close time they would give them by
law from March 15 to August 1.
Many country gentlemen have for a long
time been in the habit of employing men to pro-
tect useful birds in their breeding seasons ; but
so httle is what these men do, understood, that
THE BALANCE OF NATURE. 2o
we find one gentleman telling this Committee,
' Keepers think everything but game is to be
murdered.' Another in almost the same words :
'An average gamekeeper kills everything as ver-
min except what is in the game list ; ' while Mr.
Stevenson actually gravely tells the Committee
that ' a Norfolk gamekeeper told a friend of his
he shoots the nightingales and takes their eggs
because they sing so loud that they keep his
pheasants awake at night.' We cannot help
fancying that this gamekeeper was amusing him-
self a httle at the expense of a gentleman who
did not know much about pheasants, and he
must be not a little surprised to see his joke
given as evidence to a Committee of the House
of Commons.
We propose to show what the creatiu-es are
which keepers destroy, and why they destroy
them. So far from ' murdering everything but
game,' it will be found that the sorts of birds
they kill can be counted on their fingers, and
their numbers in scores, while the sorts of birds
24 GAME PEESERVERS AND BIRD TRESERYERS.
they protect are counted by himdreds, and their
numbers by tens of thousands.
They simply see that the very recommenda-
tion of this Committee is carried out. This
wild beast, which with some skill and cunning
they have at last trapped, was breaking the law ;
•and that wild bhd which they have traced to
her mountain home, and watched for weeks,
was offending against it every day. In killing
these creatures they have no more done a cruel
or barbarous action than their ancestors did
when they killed wolves.
CFIPIEE III.
THE GROUSE DISEASE.
The motive which, is inducing some landowners
to reintroduce the cruel rule of the birds of
prey over their fine estates is to be found in the
theory which certain gentlemen have formed of
the cause of that national misfortune 'the
grouse disease.' This theory is that our breed
of grouse has become degenerate, weak, and
sickly, and that at last an epidemic has broken
out among them which is carrying them all off,
because for some years man has been in the
habit of reducing their number by killing them
himself for a short time in the autumn, instead
of allowing them to be torn to pieces by their
natural enemies all the year round. In the first
place, to reason by analogy, will these naturahsts
26 GA^ilE TRESEEYERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
explain why, while we have seen the partridge,
wood-pigeon, stariing, and house-sparrow, in-
crease in still greater numbers, and for the same
reason — the destruction of the creatures which
prey upon them — and yet show not the slightest
signs of degeneration, our own beautiful British
game bird, the grouse, can only be kept in health
by being subjected to this cruel ordeal ? As Dr.
Gunther expresses it in answer to a question by
the Hon. A Herbert, 'This is an hypothesis
easily rebutted by other evidence and not borne
out by any other facts observed in the animal
kingdom.' Then Mr. Tegetmeier has published
it as his opinion that the cm^e for the grouse
disease is to preserve our birds of prey, ' as they
always kill the weak birds and leave the strong-
est to breed.'
We beheve that a more erroneous idea was
never promulgated, and we write from living
among the grouse and their enemies all the
year round, not from visiting the moors for a
few weeks in the autumn.
THE GROUSE DISEASE. 2T
Weakness in the grouse is not in any way
necessary to enable the hawk to kill him, nor,
ninety-nine times out of one hundred, is the
greatest amount of health and strength of the
shghtest avail to save him from his pursuer.
The finest cock grouse in all Scotland has
no more chance of escape when he once rises
from the heather before the wild peregrine
falcon than an unfortunate rabbit would have if
Master M'Grath were slipped after him in the
middle of Sahsbury Plain.
We have seen even the little merhn hawk
overtake in fair flight and kill an unusually
fine old grouse in the month of February ; and
a grouse came by pursued by the sparrow-
hawk in the month of January, and though by
shouting and throwing our hats at the hawk he
was compelled to make a wide detour, he
caught and killed his quarry before our eyes ;
and in a single walk straight through the hill in
the spring on one day we picked up the remains
of five grouse all killed by falcons within a
28 GMIE PEESERVEES AND BIED PEESEEVEES.
week, and in a country where they are rather
larger than usual and disease is unknown.
It would be as reasonable in our opinion to
fire a mitraiJleuse down PiccadiUy once a week
with the idea of improving the stamina of the
London population by destroying sickly chil-
dren and incurable invahds as to allow the
falcon to breed with the idea that he will kill
the sickly grouse only. And the simile holds
good still further, for as these sickly people
would be likely to be confined to their houses
and thus to escape the murderous discharge,
so the sickly grouse, where they exist, are
cowering in the taU heather afraid to face the
open, and are the last birds that will ever rise
before a falcon.
But Mr. E. Gray argues that immense
numbers of grouse are every season wounded
and drag on a miserable ez^stence, but that they
all actually breed next year unless destroyed
by birds of prey, and rear a sickly brood ; and
that this is the cause of the so-called grouse
THE GROUSE DISEASE. 29^
disease, for lie adds ratlier naively ' lie can see
no other way of accounting for it.'
But this is not niucli more logical than the
gamekeeper's argument, who told the Eev. Mr.
Tristram that ' he was sure the cuckoos turned
into hawks in the winter, for if not what became
of them ? ' and it does not seem to strike Mr.
Gray that if his argument is sound we should
have had a ' partridge disease ' also long ago.
A wounded bird, in our opinion, invariably
either dies, generally in a few hours, certainly
within a few days, or perfectly recovers. We
do not allude to such an injury as a broken leg.
The loss of a leg is a serious afiair to a pheasant,
who has to scratch to a certain extent for his
living, but not of much consequence to a grouse.
But the law detur fortiori steps in, and either
bird has but little chance of obtaining a mate.
He is hunted away by the other males, and
must retire as fast as his one leg will carry him.
Even among men after our wars, though
we see many whose constitutions are shattered
30 GAME PRESERVERS AXD BIRD PRESERVERS.
by disease, we see none who survive so injured
by wounds as to be likely to give birth to sickly
cliildren.
Can we fancy a grouse telling bis mate
on a spring morning, ' My dear, I feel very
poorly to-day ; that No. 5 in my spine is
troubling me dreadfully ' ? It would remind one
of the story the old Brighton boatman told the
schoolboys of the dreadful battles he used to
fight when he was a smuggler, as narrated in
^ Punch ' — how on one occasion, ' he received
three balls in his stomach and two in his head,
and he felt them still sometimes in the winter,
that he did.'
Our sickly poultry do not lay, and we do
not believe sickly grouse do either, though they
may be smitten by disease after they have
paired. Let anyone creep near a pair of
grouse in the spring ; he mil find the cock the
picture of health, as he walks along with his
impertinent jerky swagger. He only wants
:a hat and feather well on one side of his
THE GROUSE DISEASE. 31
head and a sword by his side, and he is
the beau ideal of a gay cavalier. And no
English lady looks fresher or comes down
to breakfast more neatly dressed than the hen,
until her feathers get ruffled for want of time
to attend to her toilet, and she spoils her
tail by sitting too long in one position. But
the Eev. H. B. Tristram has noticed that when a
hawk pursues a flock of birds he always strikes
the hindermost, and of course this is the
weakest. We do not agree to this, because
birds, are so even in their powers of flight that in
the short distance that a hawk follows them,
this hindermost bird would be simply the one
which sprang from the heather some twenty
yards nearer to the hawk, and he is never able
to regain his lost advantage. Mr. Tristram does
not tell us, however, that for six months out of
the twelve it will be a pair of grouse and not a
flock which will rise before the falcon ; or if he
has noticed in this case that it is always the
hen which he kills. Whichever he kills, it is
32 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
clear there will be a pack the less on the ground
in the autumn.
Surely any deterioration in a breed of
birds, before showing itself in the form of an
epidemic, would show itself in a' steady de-
crease in their size and weight, their powers
of flight, and in the number of eggs which
they would lay each season. We never heard
that this was observed before the outbreak of
the disease.
But we seem to have a very clear clue
to the reason why, of all birds in the world,
the grouse is the one most likely to be attacked
by some disease. PlcDty of gentlemen well
qualified to form an opinion have noticed this.
It is found in the fact that while all other
bh'ds feed on a variety of substances, the
grouse feed nearly entirely on heather. And
in the same way that the Irish population
when they depended entirely on the potato
sickened and died as soon as the potato disease
appeared, so when the heather is seriously
THE GKOUSE DISEASE. o3
injured by frost, the grouse can hardly escape
sickness where they exist in considerable
numbers. In a paper published in that useful
book, ' The Transactions of the Highland
Society,' the author had taken the trouble to
trace the line of the grouse disease, and he
never found it within ten miles of the west
coast. ISTow the influence of the Gulf Stream
is supposed to extend at least ten miles inland,
and as far as this is felt the heather is never
seriously injured by frost. But some people
will say, why did not the disease show itself
years ago ? We believe because, when grouse
were scarce, the few that were allowed to
live through the winter could always find
enough wholesome food. However bad the
potato disease was, half-a-dozen Irishmen
could have always picked out sound potatoes
in sufficient quantity to keep them alive where
a hundred must have starved. If our grouse
are to exist in the numbers which we like to
see in the autumn, they must have something
D
34 GAME PRESERVERS AKD BIRD TRESERVERS.
else to depend upon in severe winters besides
the v^ild frost-bitten heatlier. It is by feeding
them highly, not by getting them destroyed
by birds of prey, that we shall preserve them
in health through the w^inter. and in a fit
state to rear large and healthy broods in the
spring.
We have seen the wood-pigeon increase in
countless thousands because he can obtain in
winter food which his ancestors never tasted.
We must educate our grouse to a more
liberal diet in this nineteenth century. They
will eat corn greedily when they can get it,
which is only for a little while in the autumn
and in a few places. We have shot grouse
both on the Lammermuir Hills and in Ireland,
coming regularly to the stubbles every evening
in the end of October, when we wanted some
and they could not be approached in any. other
way. The black grouse come regularly to our
corn-fields, but with them it is an acquked
taste. In the Austrian Tyrol, where the tail
THE GROUSE DISEASE. 35
of the blackcock forms tlie favourite ornament
for the peasants' hats, the foresters told us they
never visit the corn-fields, and could scarcely
believe that they would eat corn. There is
hardly a moor in Scotland where a few acres
could not be cultivated, or where grouse do
not akeady find their way to our fields to pick
up the wretched pittance we leave them. Our
Highland proprietors must not grudge a little
expense for the beautiful birds whose presence
on their lands brings them in such large
rentals. The crop should be left on purpose
for them in certain small fields. They would
visit these as long as a grain of corn was to
be picked up, and grain should be put down
regularly with a liberal hand if the weather
become severe. What is even 30/. or 40Z.
spent in corn compared to a shooting rental
of 500/. per annum ? and no one grudges the
food the breeding stock of pheasants eat in
the winter. We may be wrong, but we feel
convinced this plan would do far more tov/ards
D 2
36 GMIE PEESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
keeping grouse in health than handing them
over, through the length and breadth of bonny
Scotland, to the cruel surgical operations which
Dr. Falco Peregrinus is only too anxious to
perform on them all the year round.
Yet grouse do constantly pass through an
ordeal which none but those blessed with the
very strongest constitutions can stand. They
are reared at a height above the level of the
sea, and often in weather through which no other
young game birds (except, of course, their first
cousin the ptarmigan) could live. When the
pelting, pitiless rain sets in, and the thermo-
meter falls almost to freezing-point, then it is
that the weakly chicks die. Those which
survive are those possessing most vital energy,
and these are often scarcely half the brood.
Were an old cock grouse with a consti-
tution shattered by many wounds, almost as
full of spent shot as a pudding is of currants,
to pair with an interesting young hen who had
suffered from chronic hver complaint all her
THE GROUSE DISEASE. 37
life, and to succeed in hatching a sickly brood,
they would inevitably succumb to the first
twenty- four hours of this weather. They
would not live long enough to grow wing
feathers, and they would never fly before a
hawk at all. If gentlemen's moors are too
crowded with grouse, or if they have diseased
birds on their grounds, let them send the
keepers out to shoot them even in the winter
months. If they leave their numbers to be
reduced by the falcon, it is the strong bold
buxls which he will kill, and not the weakly
ones, as Dr. Giinther tells the Committee.
38 GAME rRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
CHAPTEE IV.
BIRDS OF PREY.
Birds of prey have become so nearly extinct
lately that most people's idea of what hawks
do, is derived from what they see or hear
about tame hawks or from watching the kestrel
hovering over a field mouse. But in the
Western Highlands they are still numerous, and
here, the gentlemen who think 'they add a
beautiful feature to human hfe,' and that
' they add to the picturesque in natm''e,' are
likely for some time to come to be gratified
by seeing a poor bird full of life and happiness
struck lifeless on a bright May morning, or
carried screaming off wliile his poor mate even
ventures to flutter with helpless cries to his
BIRDS OF PREY. 39
rescue. For ourselves we would sooner look
on at a Spanish bull-fight; but the know-
ledge that for every time this tragedy is seen
it is performed unseen five hundred times may
be a gratification to some people. The terror
which the mere appearance of these birds causes
to the harmless birds they prey upon is but little
understood ; but surely no tales of ' old bogie '
invented by foolish nurses to frighten children
exceed the reality in this case, and we can
fancy a partridge quieting a refractory young
one by telling him that the hawk should have
him.
Goldsmith, in his ' Animated Nature,' tells
us, ' Whenever they appear in the cultivated
plain or the warbling grove it is only for the
purposes of depredation, and they are gloomy
intruders on the general joy of the landscape.
They spread terror wherever they approach,
all that variety of music which but a moment
before enlivened the grove, at their appearing
is at an end, every bird seeking safety in con-
40 GAME PRESERVERS AXD BIRD PRESERVERS.
cealment or in flight.' JSTo doubt, besides cer-
tain naturalists, it is our falconers who are
anxious to make birds of prey more numerous ;
but what would our keenest coursers think of a
proposal that greyhounds should be allowed to
breed wild, that they might have the pleasure
of seeing a course occasionally without being
at the expense of keeping up a kennel ?
When any account of the destruction caused
by wild hawks appears in any of the papers,
quite a little clique rush to the rescue, and as-
suming a monopoly of all knowledge of the
habits of birds, try to prove their favourite
innocent, though they get involved in the most
hopeless contradictions. To read what they
write one would fancy that hawks fed on insects
and grass during the spring and summer, though
occasionally in the autumn, in a fit of rough
playfulness, they will kill a bird which by a
provision of Nature is always a weakly one.
One gentleman told us not long ago, that if we
would only study natural history we should not
BIRDS OF PREY. 41
think tliat falcons and sparrow-hawks mflicted
much suffering on birds. Were a race of
superior beings who perfectly understood the
natural history of mankind to introduce from
the planet Saturn a race of flying dragons,
each of which would requu'e a fresh-killed
human being each day for its subsistence, would
their presence inflict much suffering on us ?
Our stout and invalid friends, never venturing
out of the house, would represent the badly
diseased grouse which, it is allowed, the falcon
seldom kills. Our bold and active friends often
falhng victims would represent the old cock
grouse which ' Peregrine ' tells us are frequently
caught, while our women and children being
most generally captured would prove the truth
of the saying that the hawk kills the weakest
bird, and we should also have an idea how
their presence was likely to improve the health
of the breed.
JSTo bird keeps a better look out for hawks
than our domestic turkey. Doubtless they are
42 GAME PRESEIIVERS AND BIRD rHESERVERS.
extensively preyed upon by them in their own
country, and it is curious to see how the
instinct so long dormant revives wherever they
are exposed to their attacks. They have a
soft gentle cry which the youngest chick knows
means ' conceal yourself or you are lost,' quite
different from the quick sharp call which means
' run in all directions,' which is the command
if a cat or weasel appears. On one occasion
we heard this cry repeated in several directions,
and seventy turkeys managed to disappear from
view quite as suddenly as PJioderick Dhu's
famous band did at his whistle.
Two buzzards were soaring over-head, and
continued circling over them for some time
until the old turkey cock's nerves finally gave
way. Tucking in his feathers until he looked
half his usual size, he ran for the house scream-
ing Avith terror, a perfect picture of abject
cowardice.
We once found a sparrow-hawk perched
actually on one of the coops, and master of the
BIEDS OP PKEY. 43
situation, wlien we went to feed some pheasants
early one morning. They had all escaped, but
they did not return for three hours and their
peace of mind was gone. For days afterwards,
at the slightest alarm from one of the hens, or
at the mere sight of a passing gull, they would
all disappear from our very feet into a neigh-
bouring piece of potatoes with a celerity wdiich
was quite wonderful.
Let any mother imagine that she has to
give her children all their meals in the open
air, where they are hkely to be seen and
carried off by an eagle at any moment, their
chance of safety consisting in her keeping
watch and screaming ' hide ' when he appears,
upon which they must all dive headlong under
the table, and she will have some idea of the
situation.
The inhabitants of an Indian village which
is infested by man-eating tigers could understand
better than we can the position in which birds
are placed in countries that abound with hawks.
44 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD TRESERYERS.
Khismat ki hhat, ' It is the will of Providence ! '
exclaim the unfortunate survivors as relation
after relation disappears. ' It is the will of man ! '
may our poor birds exclaim as their numbers
are thinned day by day.
Professor Newton tells this Committee,
' There is quite a healthy feehng growing that
hawks should not be killed ; ' and we are
told that the Duke of Sutherland, Mr. Cunliffe
Brooke, and others are carefully preserving
birds of prey in their large estates. Do these
gentlemen realise that every pair of peregrine
falcons, sparrow-hawks, and merlins which by
their orders are reared on their property, will
the next year destroy at the very least 1,000
birds, all beautiful and most of them useful to
man ?
Any naturalist who considers this an ex-
aggerated statement will find himself in this
dilemma: he must assert that one of these
birds, say the falcon, having breakfasted soon
after dayhght on one day, while taking an
BIRDS OF PEEY. 45
immense amount of exercise in the keen
mountain air, will not taste food again for 48
hours, which we think few will believe. Or
that he will eat carrion, which is known not to
be the case. A bird a day is probably the mini-
mum each hawk will kill for himself. That
amounts to 730 birds for the pair. But in
rearing their three young ones (and the
sparrow-hawk and merlin have more than
three), from the time they are hatched in the
month of May until they drive them away
in the autumn, 100 birds for each young hawk
will be found a very small allowance, yet this
makes 1,030 birds ; and we are far under the
real estimate, for we have known a pair of
falcons watched and seen to bring six grouse
to their young ones in four hours, shortly after
they had left the nest, the young hawks rising
a little way each time to meet their parents in
the air, snatching the birds from them, and
descending to fight over them. This is the
actual destruction, and will some naturahst
46 GAME rRESERYERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
calculate the indirect destruction, as each bird
killed between February and June is either father
or mother and a whole brood is lost ? And are
assemblies to pass laws for the preservation of
birds, to prevent schoolboys and bird-catchers
from killing them, and yet preserve these
creatures ? ' Save us from our friends,' must
be our poor birds' cry.
The large hawks often liunt in couples.
Once in India a flock of teal came towards us,
high in the air, and two fell to our shot. As
they were falling we heard a rushing noise,
which our companion afterwards compared to
the fall of a 21 -inch shell, and as the teal fell at
our feet, hterally in the rebound each was seized
by an enormous hawk, and carried off; but
we shot the leading bird, and his mate then
dropped her prey and escaped. It was quite
common for kites to pick up our snipe wliile
we were loading ; but these hawks were evi-
dently following the teal before we fired, and
we always noticed when they dashed in among
BIRDS OF PREY. 47
a flock of ducks liigli in the air tliat the flock
would open, some ascending, some closing their
wings and falling like stones to reach the shelter
of the trees, and it was these last birds which
the hawk always followed.
Once in Scotland a mallard rose out of shot
from a httle loch, but was soon seen returning
hotly pursued by two falcons. He had a long-
start, and had just reached the water when
down came the female, and though he partly
dodged the blow she knocked him down, pro-
bably with her wing, at the water's edge, and
seizing liim by the back with one foot and a
bunch of heather with the other, she held him
in spite of his struggles, screaming all the time
to her companion, ' Come and help ! come and
help ! ' And coming he was as fast as wings
could carry him, when he detected the head
keeper not seventy yards off also hurrying up
to join in the fray. He gave a sharp cry of
alarm ; the other directly let go the duck, which
escaped on to the loch apparently unhurt, and
made off. .
48 GMIE rRESERVERS AKD BIRD PRESERVERS.
Hawks which overtake their prey on the
wing constantly strike them dead in the air.
The frontispiece to that charming book, ' Game
Birds and Wildfowl,' by Mr. Knox, ' The Death
of the Mallard,' gives a capital illustration of
this. It is with the powerful hind talon that
the death wound is generally inflicted, but as
hawks sometimes miss their blow altogether,
so they occasionally strike more fully than they
intended.
Then, as Mr. Knox expresses it, ' It is the
breast-bone protected by such strong pectoral
muscles that the concussion which deprives
its victims of life can have no injurious effect
upon the author of the momentum ' which
causes the injury. This is no doubt sometimes
the case, and we believe the hawk fears con-
cussion with the bird he pursues no more than
a strong boy fears charging another at football.
The best instance that we ever saw of this was
when we once put up a hen grouse in the
month of February, which w^as immediately
BIEDS OF PREY. 49
pursued by a merlin. On coming over a ridge
which had concealed the birds from our view,
the merhn rose from the heather; and on going
to' the spot we picked up the grouse, whiclx
died in our hands. This grouse weighed 24 oz.
The skin was not broken, but she had a
tremendous bruise over the spine.
On two occasions, when beating the jungles
in India we saw pea-fowl killed in the air
by hawks. They fell among the trees with
an unmistakable crash, like the fall of a
pheasant shot clean. And we know a keeper
who saw a heron killed in the air. It fell close
to him, and he picked it up before the hawk
descended. The grand sudden death of these
great birds is certainly very different to the
pictures one sees and the descriptions one reads
of the way tame hawks take herons. After
getting a little above them, they seem to settle
on then' backs (binding is, we believe, the
correct term), and they descend to the earth
E
50 GA]\IE PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
together, scratching and fighting like a bagful
of cats.
There are two sorts of eagles — the golden
eagle and the sea eagle ; and six sorts of hawks
— the buzzard, the hen harrier, the peregrine
falcon, the sparrow hawk, the merlin, and the
kestrel — still found in the British Isles.
We will try all these creatures for their
lives, and see if they offend, or how far they
offend, against the law we wish to pass to
enable our birds to breed in peace.
Then we have still some beasts of prey in
Great Britain. There is the mountain fox, the
cat, the polecat, the stoat and the weasel, the
rat and the hedgehog. These are all suspicious
characters. We v/ill enquire how they spend
the summer months.
A few other species are occasionally met
with, such as the goshawk and the marten cat ;
but they are rare.
51
CHAPTEE V.
THE EAGLE, THE BUZZARD, AXD THE HEX
H.\ERIER.
A PAIR of fishing eagles bred every year oil a
rock overhanging the sea at one extremity of
our shooting manor, and we never disturbed
them. One season the head keeper was
lowered by a rope, at some risk, and took the
eggs for the owner of the property. They
were three in number, very large and white.
The nest was made of a mass of sticks. They
never took lambs ; but white hares were very
scarce at that end of the ground, and we hardly
ever saw a grouse within four miles of their
nest. Possibly their mere presence passing
backwards and forwards so often may have
frightened them out of the country.
E 2
52 GAME PRESERVEKS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
Had we a deer-forest, and golden eagles
bred in it, we would protect them to keep down
the hares. The hinds conceal their fawns when
quite young so well that they would seldom
find them, and after they are strong enough to
follow their mothers we should think they
would be safe.
But they will take lambs. A very intelli-
gent shepherd told us that when he was em-
ployed in the Island of Eum in one season he
lost more than seventy lambs by eagles. His
employer then bought him a gun, and in the
next eleven years he killed forty golden eagles
by exposing dead sheep and building a hiding-
place near them. Mr. E. Gray thinks they
would be more likely to take a sickly lamb
than a healthy one ; that the mother would
be able to defend a healthy one. We have but
little faith in these theories. When an eagle
has swooped down upon a lamb it is its weight,
and not its state of health, that will settle the
question whether he carries it off or not. He
THE EAGLE, BUZZARD, A2s'D HEX HAERIER. 53
will not feel its pulse nor enquire how it is ;
and shepherds say they will not take them
.after they are three weeks old ; while if the
ewe has the courage to charge the eagle and
hterally to send him ' flying,' she would do this
whether the lamb was strong or weak. Mr.
Gray does not think they will eat carrion. It
is fortunate that they do, or they would be far
more destructive than they are. We know a
keeper who trapped two which were feeding on
the carcase of a dead liind.
Mr. Bonner, in a book called ' Forest
Creatures,' lays it down as a well-known fact
that they will fast for days together. This is
the sort of statement that it would seem im-
possible to prove ; for what man has ever
watched an eagle from sunrise to sunset? though
were he heavily to gorge himself late in the
evening he might perhaps be seen sitting on
the same rock the whole of the next day.
They are still more numerous than people
imagine, and we see a few every year in the
54 GAME PEESERYEES AND BIED PEESEEYEES.
Western Highlands, but we know but little
about tliem.
The buzzard is the next largest bird of prey,
and it will also liYe a good deal on carrion, and
is easily trapped. It will also rob the falcon of his
prey, the latter making no objection; in fact,
rather liking the fun of catching another bird.
It takes but few grouse except when they are
young ; but, ' small blame to it,' it is only be-
cause it cannot catch them, unless it takes them
by surprise. It will snatch a grouse from her
nest, or a grey hen from the ground as she sits
cowering over her little ones to cover them
from the pelting of some sudden storm. Their
legs and wings are found round their nests.
Do people realise the sufferings of these young-
birds when their mothers are taken? They
call and call, for they are so sure she will return.
She always has when she has had to leave them
before when the shepherd or his dog have come
too near. But the cruel cold night comes
down upon them, and their httle calls get
THE EAGLE, BUZZAED, AND HEN HARRIER. 55
weaker and weaker, and long before morning
they are all dead. We do not like these birds ;
but if any gentlemen do particularly hke to see
them sometimes flying round and round in lazy
circles, we do not fancy that their presence on
a well-stocked moor will very materially reduce
the number of grouse, and they will no doubt
be glad enough to take a sick or wounded bird.
We have known them make their nest on the
ground at the edge of a ravine, and they lay
three eggs of a dirty white colour.
The hen harrier is scarcely mentioned to the
Committee at all. It is rare, and it is desirable
it should remain so. The difference of colour
between the plumage of the male and female is
most striking. The cock bird at a httle dis-
tance may be taken for a sea-gull. We saw an
old female shot last September, as it rose from
the body of a half-grown hare, and we shot
another as it was in the act of killing an old
partridge in January. They are difficult to
56 GAME rKESERVERS AJST) BIRD PRESERVERS.
shoot, as they frequent the open country, and
they build on the ground among the heather.
One spring some cattle taking alarm at some
dogs, which were out with the keeper, running
through the heather put up a hen harrier, and
actually trod in the nest and broke all the eggs.
This bird, however, laid again and reared a brood
on the same hill and very near the same spot.
They thinned the grouse most cruelly. It was
the best breeding season we ever saw, and packs
were all large where they bred in peace, but
very few in that part of the country numbered
more than four birds. We found five packs in
succession each numbering four.
The old male, when he was shot at last, had
his crop full of wire-worms. Probably lie
had been recommended change of diet for a
time. We do not beheve that ISTatm-e gave
him those long wings, and that hooked
beak, and those cruel claws to himt and catch
worms with as a rule.. Her worm-hunting
cliildren are differently armed. Harriers fly
THE EAGLE, BUZZARD, AND HEN HARRIER. 57
low, quartering their ground and hovering over
a bird hke the httle kestrel, only much
nearer the ground. One so terrified some par-
tridges while doing this that they let us catch
them. Once in the Amatola Mountains we found
a low thick bush crowded with poor birds of the
thrush tribe, and two harriers hovering over it.
These birds let us catch them, and we were
cruel enough to throw one up in the air. The
hawks were after it directly ; but it turned back
and settled at our feet, and we shot the hawk.
We do not know if they will eat carrion ; but
fancy not, as they were never caught in the
traps which caught the buzzard.
The female was on the ground all the year
round, and would come near the houses in the
winter ; but the male disappeared every autumn,
returning in the spring. It was two years
before he was shot, though we put ten shillings
on his head. He looks very well in a glass
case now, and that is the proper place for all the
breed in our opinion.
58 GAME rRESERVERS AND BIED PEESERYEES.
We have several times seen them overtake
partridges, and once saw them overtake grouse
on the wing, but they either cannot or do not
wish to strike then- quarry in the air. On each
occasion the hunted bird closed its wings and
settled. The hawk then hovered over it for a
moment, and then pounced on it.
59
CHAPTEE VI.
THE FALCOIf.
' Falco Peregriniis,' the wanderer, is by far
the noblest of our birds of prey, for, while the
eagle will condescend to feed upon carrion, we
never knew an instance of a falcon being detected
in doing this. In fact, he will not even return
to his quarry if once disturbed from it. Seve-
ral of the witnesses whose evidence is before
us wish to preserve him, thinking he will act
the part of a wise physician and cure the
grouse of their disease. Professor Newton
thinks him 'harmless,' but states he used
only to see one ' for three weeks in the year,
and then he generally killed pigeons.' None
of these gentlemen mention their habits in the
breeding season, and it is curious to observe
€0 GAME PEESEEVERS AXD BIED PEESEEVEES.
how little is known about their numbers.
Even Sir D. Wedderburn says : ' I suppose
one could count on one's lingers the nests of
the peregrine falcon which are in England,
Wales, and Scotland.' Why, last May, while
standing within shot of a falcon's nest, from
which we had just killed the old bird, we
could see with the naked eye five other rocks
or mountains on which, to our certain know-
ledge, they have bred regularly imtil quite
recently, and on which they are each year
trying to re-establish themselves. The furthest
of these nests is not quite twenty miles from
where Ave were standing; the others very much
nearer. And we know of two other nests in
the neighbourhood. These birds seem to de-
pend more for protection on the very lonely
natm-e of the spot selected for their nest
than on its inaccessible situation. It is easy
to climb witliin shot of nearly all the
nests w^e have seen, and some of them may
even be robbed without the aid of ropes or
ladders.
THE FALCON. 61
In Meyer's ' Britisli Birds ' tlie nest is saicT
to be composed of sticks. We have found
nothing but a shght hollow scraped on the'
bare rock, a fit cradle for these bold and hardy
birds. The eggs, three in number, are of a
handsome, rich, dark red. Generally, one is
much lighter than the other two. Few people
have the slightest idea how destructive they
are to all the bkds we most value. This arises
a good deal, we believe, from naturalists ex-
amining the contents of their nests generally
in parts of the country where game is nearly
extinct, and, of course, finding few traces of
it. Or a single pair are occasionally tole-
rated, as Lord Lilford states, in districts like
certain parts of Perthshire which are so
pecuharly favourable to grouse, and where ^
from all other vermin having been for many
years carefLilly destroyed, grouse are so very
numerous that the depredations of the falcon are
scarcely noticed ; and sportsmen bag thirty or
forty brace a day instead of sixty or seventy
62 GAME piieserat:rs axd bird preservers.
brace. But their presence in the Western
Highlands turns the balance, and makes the
difference between estates being worth shoot-
ing over or not ; and proprietors in this
part of Scotland will never know what
rental their estates will produce until the
falcon is about as rare as the great auk.
As an instance, we know a fine estate which
has been let for the last three seasons for
500/. a year, which for nine years was neither
let nor shot over, though three and four
keepers were kept on it all the time.
The grouse never increased, and five brace
was an unusual bag;. Since three falcon's nests
were discovered m the neighbourhood, and
they were regularly prevented from breeding,
from twenty to thirty brace has become quite
an ordinary bag. The presence of these birds
on the ground made a difference of 800/. a
year to the proprietor, as the estate cost at
least 300/. a year to keep up instead of
bringing in a clear 500/. ; and a number of
THE FALCON. 63
other estates are doubtless similarly situated.
Only last summer a gentleman wrote to us
that he could not account for game being so
scarce on his shooting grounds under such
seemingly favourable conditions. Before we
had been three hours on the ground the
mystery was explained. We found a falcon's
nest. For these birds break up nearly every
pair of grouse in the breeding season. Be-
tween the months of February and July either
the cock or hen is nearly sure to fall a victim.
They seem to leave this part of Scotland in
October. We have never seen them between
that month and February, except once on
January 29. It is easy to know when they
return. If you are out on the hill with the
young dogs and one of them draws a little,
then hesitates, and then walks in to smell at
something, if you go to the spot you will find
the earthly remains of what was a few hours
before a fine specimen of 'Lagopus Scoticus.*
He wiU be lying on his back, with his head
64 GAME TRESEEVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
pulled off; his bones will not be broken, but
neatly picked. A long trail of feathers will
mark the place where he received his death-
blow. Then remember the message which
Eang John received when Eichard Coeur de
Lion escaped from prison : ' Take heed to
yourself; the devil has broken loose.' And
if you cannot kill this murderer, you will
find these signs of his presence whenever
you walk on the mountains.
Would the gentlemen who wrote so
smoothly, ' Spare yoiu: birds of prey, parti-
cularly the falcon ; he will kill the weak
birds and leave the strong ones to breed,' be
contented to see their favourite poultry treated
in this manner? And every grouse killed
between February and July is a whole pack
off the ground in August. When they
have once paired and selected their breeding
ground, if they are killed, none come that
year to supply their place. In 1871, suspect-
ing that a pair of falcons had intended breed-
THE FALCOTS". 65
ing on a certain mountain in the heart of
oiu: best shooting ground, we went carefully
through it in the middle of May,- when the
hen would be setting, clapping om- hands
and shouting under each likely rock, but,
seeing nothing of them, thought all was safe,
and that they had left. Early in August a
shepherd brought us word that some large
hawks on that farm were mobbing his dogs.
The keeper went to the spot, and found that
they had bred on the very rock we had most
carefully examined, the hen being too cunning
to show herself for the noise we made. Next
day we took out some dogs, with which we
had found fifty-two brace of grouse in three
hours a few days before, and hunted that
country.
We saw five barren brace, one covey of
squeakers, and three odd cocks. These barren
braces were the birds whose mates had been
taken, and which paired afterwards, but too late
to breed. The remains of grouse were scattered
6Q GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
all round the rock, and they were equally
scarce in all that part of the country ; and they
had supplied their young so abundantly that
many of the birds they had brought them were
not half eaten.
Mr. E. Gray says their favourite food is a
snipe. We have never seen one in their nests
or near them ; but if they bred near a place
where snipes were numerous, and other birds
not to be had, no doubt they would take them.
Our experience is that five out of six birds
they take are grouse or black game if they are
to be had in the country. They are the most
easily caught and the best eating, so it is only
natural they should eat them. They also fre-
quently kill birds for sport. The poor gulls,
conspicuous in their white plumage, are often
struck down and not eaten ; and a shepherd once
brought us a kestrel, which he saw a falcon
kill without taking the trouble of following it to
the ground.
Some falconers ask. How is it possible for a
. THE FALCOIS^ 67
falcon to kill so many grouse, for we all know
tliat when a falcon is in tlie air tliey will not
take wing ? The wild hawk is too cunning to
show himself as their tame falcons do, trust-
ing to their aUies, the dogs, to put up their
quarry for them. He watches motionless on a
rock, or suddenly appears over a mountain
ridge, and if there are any grouse in the country
at all they are sure sometimes to wander on to
the bare, burnt ground where the young heather
is so sweet. He is upon them hke a whirlwind,
though whether he will actually strike them on
the ground is a disputed question. We know
he will skim a young wild duck from the sur-
face of the water, and the feathers near the
remains often show that they must have been
struck close to the ground ; probably in the
act of rising.
One gentleman ^vrote to the papers ad-
vising keepers to preserve peregrine falcons to
reduce the number of hoodie crows, because
he had a tame tiercel which lived on rooks when
p2
68 GAME PRESERVERS AKD BIRD PRESERVERS.
it was at liberty. No doubt the poor hungry
creature was glad to make a meal of any bird
it saw passing, and had not the wit to find game
birds which naturally concealed themselves
whenever he appeared ; but our head keeper in
fifteen years had not only never seen a falcon
kill a hoodie crow, but has never found the
remains of one which seemed to have been
killed by a hawk.
We have known a pair of crows build and
rear their young on a solitary tree on an island
in the middle of a small loch in the centre of
the hunting ground of a pair of falcons where
the remains of grouse and ducks were foimd
every week. We ourselves twice saw the falcon
strike at one of the crows, which, by a sudden
change of front, turned in the ah^ and presented
beak and claws to the attack, and the hawk
seemed to fear to charge home. These were
the tactics adopted by two pair of ravens which
bred on the same mountain as these falcons.
They were always fighting when the falcons
THE FALCOX. 69
first arrived in the spring, and it was very
amusing to watch them ; but they called nothing
for their attacks, and ultimately settled down to
an armed neutrality.
There must be an establishment for un-
married female falcons somewhere. The male
never seems to have any trouble in procuring
a mate. We have known one procure tln:ee
in a few weeks. It is also cmious how they will
continue to frequent rocks on which they have
once bred. In 1874 the eggs were taken from
one rock and a female was shot on another, al-
though to our certain knowledge the yoimg have
not taken wing from the nest on either rock since
1869, and every year since that time at least one
bnd has been shot at each of those nests. They
are very rarely seen, and their presence on a pro-
perty is often not suspected. Although one smn-
mer we saw fomleen on wing round their nests,
during the following shooting season we never
saw one, though we constantly came on the
remains of birds they had killed. This was
70 GA]\rE PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
because they generally feed soon after daylight,
and then reth-e to the most lonely rocks to
spend the day.-
We should greatly like to see some of the
gentlemen who write, ' Let them be shot if in-
conveniently numerous, but not in their breed-
ing season,' take a vow to drink no fermented
liquor and to taste no meat until they had shot
one after August 1. They would find the
pursuit of the Holy Grail quite as easy a quest.
If they happened to discover the mountain on
which they were it would be only to see them
take wing, probably at a distance of at least 300
yards, and they would most likely cross an arm
of the sea before they settled again. Once on
a 6th of August we saw a party of S^ve come
across the loch to us. They were all flying in
wide circles like a convoy of ships with sailing
orders to keep in sight of each other, occa-
sionally screaming to each other, every now and
then dipping down till they were near the tops
of the hills, then suddenly rising again high in
THE FALCON. 71
the air. It was a pretty sight ; but we did not
think it repaid us for the consequences, should
they have honoured us by staying a fortnight on
oiu- mountains. But we did not go out falcon-
shooting the next day, for we should not have
known within twelve miles in any direction
where to look for them.
We do not suppose the cat or the fox ever
Hved who ever caught one. They can have
no enemy but man, and generally die of old
age.
We gave ten shillings for each one that was
brought us, but with four guns always out we
never during six years knew one killed between
the months of July and March. We paid one
man, however, for seven before the middle of May
in one year. These birds were all shot before an
egg was hatched. We never left their young to
starve, as they are every day leaving the young
of other birds. As Dr. Gunther tells the Com-
mittee, birds of prey ought to be destroyed
during their breeding season because ' it is then
72 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
they are doing the greatest amount of mischief ;
and you cannot protect useful birds in a better
way than by destroying their destroyers.' They
return to the rocks upon which they breed to
roost many weeks before they lay, but it is
weary work waiting for them. No keeper cares
to attempt it for the sixpence he gets for them
simply as a hawk. You must be hid early in the
afternoon, as they may return early, but it may
not be until sunset, and then perhaps only to
settle just out of shot, and if you move to get
nearer they are off for that day. A pair which
bred on a lonely little island used to return so
high as to be scarcely visible ; then, closing
their wings, they would fall like stones till they
reached their favourite rocks. About a week
before they hatch the hen will sometimes sit so
close that she will not leave the nest unless a
shot is fired. We knew one sit on the nest and
scream at us as we clapped our hands within
thirty yards, but she would not fly.
' Inconveniently numerous ! ' What a curious
THE FALCOiS^. 73
expression ! How many of his breeding stock
of Dorking liens and Aylesbury ducks does a
man like killed by wild beasts in tke spring ?
And how many of our breeding stock of beauti-
ful grouse are we likely to wish destroyed when
we know that if every bird which is ahve on
the ground in February is ahve in August, we
shall hardly average, with the help of the best
dogs, twenty brace a day ?
But these birds will always be encouraged in
the deer-forests, and very properly, on purpose
that they may kill down the grouse.
No bird ever renders himself so perfectly
hateful to man as an old cock-grouse, who, when
you have perhaps but another hundred yards to
crawl to be within shot of the finest stag you
have seen that season, rises before you and flies
straight towards him, crowing and chattering
all the time. For that beautiful beast has
not lived in this wicked world long enough
to develop those twelve points on those wide-
74 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
spreading antlers -without learning a thing
or two.
He will certainly interpret that wild cry to
mean ' The Phihstines are upon you, Samson ! '
and before you can reach the top of the ridge
in front of you he will be cantering over the
opposite one five hundred yards off, perhaps
pausing for a second on the sky-line to look
back at you, and then that splendid trophy is
lost to you and your heirs for ever.
Now were a falcon to ' come out of the
clouds,' and kill that grouse and tear him to
pieces before your eyes, the punishment would
be inadequate to the crime he has committed.
Perhaps it is hours since you found that stag ;
you had to make such a round to get the wind.
And the great burn was in spate, and you could
only cross in one place, and then it w\is up to
your middle.
Now it is beginning to rain and blow as it
can rain and blow in the end of September in
the mountains. It will be dark long before you
THE FALCOK". 7 a
reach the lodge, and all the way you will be
thinking how out of place grouse are in deer-
forests.
Let natiu-alists be content to follow the
falcon to these splendid great wildernesses, and
study his habits there, and not try to introduce
him on oiu: grouse-moors where he is less
wanted, and infinitely more destructive than he
would be in our drawing-rooms.
And we are perfectly aware that there are
parts of these deer-forests where grouse are far
from scarce, although surrounded by their
enemies. But these are favoured spots so
peculiarly suited to them that they will come in
to breed there every year,
Each stepping vrhere his comrade stood
The instant that he fell.
76 GAME PRESERVEKS AND BIRD TRESERVERS.
CHAPTEE VII.
THE SPARROW-HAWK, THE MERLIN, THE KESTREL,
AND THE OWL.
The sparrow-hawk is the next most destructive
hawk that we have. He combines both
methods of attack ; either overtaldng his prey by
fair speed on the wing and dashing it to the
earth hke the falcon, or pouncing down upon it
and hfting it from the ground hke the buzzard
or hen harrier. He can catch okl grouse, par-
tridges, and pigeons, in the winter, and pick up
young pheasants in the summer as fast as they
are hatched. A gentleman wrote to one of
the papers a few years ago that he had counted
the remains of seventy-three young pheasants
under one sparrow-hawk's nest. Lord Lilford
tells the Committee that ' it will destroy an in-
SPARROW-HAWK, MERLIN, KESTREL, A:N'D OWL. 7T
credible number of young game.' Even Pro-
fessor Newton gives it up. But several gentle-
men seem to value a bird exactly in proportion
to tlie misery and destruction wliick it causes
to other birds, and wisli to preserve this one.
The Eev. H. B. Tristram says that it will live
' entirely on the wood-pigeon.' We should be
sorry to trust it. We think it would rarely
carry so heavy a bird to its nest, and it is when
feeding its young that it is most destructive.
We saw one dash down and seize a young
turkey close to the house, but the turkey hen
with great presence of mind immediately
knocked it over, and it was glad to beat a re-
treat, followed in the air for at least fifty yards
by the old turkey. The young ones all concealed
themselves, and it was an hour before they ven-
tured to reappear, the old bird walking round
and round and keeping guard in a great state
of excitement.
Very shortly afterwards, we were watching
from an upstairs window a gold cock-pheasant
78 GA^IE PRESERVERS AXD BIRD PRESERVERS.
feeding in an open wire plieasantry, and wishing
we liad twenty-five instead of seven of these
"birds, wlien like a flash of brown hgrhtning; down
came a sparrow-hawk at him. The pheasant is
a particularly sharp bird, and is as rarely found
fast asleep as the proverbial weasel. This one
was equal to the occasion. He neatly dodged the
hawk; and, with his friends, retiring to the shelter
of a large thick bush which grew in the middle of
the pheasantry nearly as quickly as his enemy had
descended, ' Accipiter Fringillarius ' found him -
self on the ground with all his wind knocked out
by the wire netting, this netting being a feature
in the landscape which had escaped his obser-
vation. He felt that his position was a false one,
and tried to escape by flying round and round
against the wire instead of ascending ; and we
complicated matters by arriving at the scene of
action with our gun, and, though he cleverly
managed to keep the bush between us for
some time, we ultimately shot him. ]N'ow this
hawk's conduct was unpardonable. They had
SPARROW-HAWK, MERLIN, KESTREL, AND OWL. 79
been systematically killed for years, so their na-
tural food must have been most numerous, and
it is a sufficient answer to the recommendation
of some naturahsts to let these birds breed in
peace, and, ' if they become too numerous, to
destroy some of them afterwards.' Too nu-
merous ! We believe this was the only bird
of the sort in the whole country, and he was
exactly one too many.
We could mention many other instances of
the destruction and mischief done by these
hawks. We will kill them as long as our
guns carry shot, and advise all occupiers of
land who love harmless birds to do the same.
We are sorry for the little merlin ; he is
such a handsome little rascal ; but he is a dread-
ful bird murderer. They are scarce because
their real character has been found out. Were
they allowed to breed undisturbed they would
soon become numerous, and other birds wouki
decrease in an alarming ratio. It is not as a
game preserver but as a bird preserver that
80 GAME PRESERVERS AIST) BIRD PRESERVERS.
we destroy liim ; tliougli, as we have stated, we
have seen him kill full-grown grouse. We simply
cannot spare a pair of them a thousand birds
annually. If he would only eat grass and wild
flowers we should be glad to see him, but he
will not until the Hon lies down ^vith the lamb.
We believe it was Sydney Smith who observed
that if the hon ever does this, while his diges-
tion continued to be what it is, it will be with
the lamb ' inside him.'
The merlin must disappear, and let all land-
owners console themselves by introducing at
least two sorts of pheasants in his place.
The kestrel is the only wild hawk most
people ever see. He is a pretty object, hover-
ing in one spot for minutes at a time. His
manner of hunting is so different froui that of
all the others, it suggests at once the idea that
he is pursuing a different object. When mice
are plentiful he seldom takes birds ; but he will
not starve, and he well knows that the little
newly-hatched pheasants and partridges are not
bad eating as a change.
SPAKROW-HAWK, MERLi:S", KESTREL, AND OWL. 81
If we were getting up game when it was
very scarce we would not allow the kestrel to
breed on the ground at first. But where game
is plentiM, we should preserve him only on
the condition that he did not carry off our
pheasants.
It is because some natiu^alists attempt too
much that they are not listened to. Wliat is
the use of their teUing keepers that the kestrel
\vill never kill a young bird, when these men
have nearly all at some time or another shot him
in the act ? If he carries off a young wild bhd,
he may never find that brood again. The hen
will probably shift her ground a little. But
our hens are cooped in comparatively bare
places ; and when he once finds out how easy
it is to procure a meal, he wiU return time
after time until there is not a bird left. Are
we really supposed to tolerate this any more
with pheasants than with turkeys or chickens ?
A keeper may have had bad luck with his
pheasants' eggs and have liatched but few, and
G
82 GMIE PRESERVEES AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
these are to disappear at tlie rate of five or six
a day ; but it is all right. He must not inter-
fere ; it is only a kestrel. This is an unusual
case, but when it happens this bird should be
watched for and shot. He is exceeding his
orders and wandering out of the path of duty.
The owl will much more rarely offend in
the 'same way. We never had an owl shot,
but they never increased in the Highlands.
Probably the chmate is too wet for the mice.
They had plenty of ivy-mantled rocks, if not
towers, to breed on, but two pair were all we
ever saw.
As a hawk can rarely kill a rat because he
is a noctiu-nal animal, so an owl can rarely kill
young game bh'ds because they are nearly
always asleep when he is about. But instances
will occur ; there is no use in denying it.
An owl is returning later than usual. It
has been a wet night, and he has had bad luck.
The mice preferred ' to sit by the fire and spin.'
He is low-spmted, for he knows that Mrs.
SPARROW-HAWK, MERLIN, KESTREL, AND OWL. 83
Owl will be cross and snappisli all day, and
the young ones will be waking liim up and
crying for food long before sunset. And
' what lungs that eldest boy has ! ' The very
remembrance makes him give a plaintive hoot.
He sees some little brown things. Perhaps he
has as much real corn-age as the man who ate
the first oyster. He takes one home and it is
pronounced excellent. Could not he just glide
out and get another ? He does, and day after
day until watched for and detected in the act.
Then the whole race are condemned ; but let
gentlemen give orders that owls are not to be
killed unless so detected, and let them take
steps to see that they have owls on their
property, and perhaps not half a dozen in all
England would be shot in a year.
The owl is the very best mouse-destroyer
we have, and a most interesting object on a
summer eveninof.
g2
84 GAME PRESERVERS AXD BIRD PRESERVERS.
CHAPTER VIE.
THE RAVEX, THE CROW, THE MAGPIE, THE JA1\
AXD THE ROOK.
The raven is a bird wliicli most gentlemen
agree ought to be exempted from protection.
Mr. R. Gray says 'it is well known for its
cruel rapacity on sheep farms.' Dr. Giinther
considers it very mischievous. It is not so
rare as some people think. We have seen
twenty-six in a flock, and it is cunning enough
to breed often in such inaccessible situations
that it is not likely to become extinct for many
years. The nest is composed of a mass of
sticks placed on the ledge of a rock, and it
lays generally three eggs as early as the end
of March, so that the young ones are strong
RAVEN, CROW, MAGPIE, JAY, AND ROOK. 85
about the time wlien most of the grouse are
hatchino^. It has a most cruel habit of attacking
the eyes of any weakly sheep or lambs. It is
not uncommon to find these poor creatures
alive on the hills with their eyes pecked out.
One we reared always attacked the eyes of any
rat or other dead animal directly it was thrown
to it, and it would swallow addled pheasants'
eggs whole one after the other. A dh'tier or
greedier pet we never saw, with nothing to
recommend it but an odd way of hopping side-
ways, and a curious trick of hiding its food.
If it does this in a state of nature, it must be
on the same principle that we hang venison
until it is high enough to eat.
When it had been out of the basket but a
few days, as it was hopping along in the garden,
a young hedge-sparrow fluttered up out of the
grass. The raven was after it in a moment. JSTo
well-bred young terrier ever charged his first
rat in better style. The unfortunate httle bird
was caught and swallowed whole, with a croak
86 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
of satisfaction, in spite of the exertions of three
people to save it. Ko one who saw the action
could doubt that young birds are the raven's
natiu-al food, and from that moment we put
' Corvus Corax ' on our condemned list, and
there he shall remain.
For we pictured to ourselves the innumer-
able tragedies which must be going on where
these birds exist — the happy famihes of young
and old grouse enjoying the spring sunshine
and the tender shoots of the heather — the
sudden descent of the sable crew — the screams
and helpless terror of the old birds, the
feeble efforts of the Httle ones to escape, all
unavaihng, only one under an old heather
stump managing to hide so that those keen
eyes cannot find him. And when some
months later the sportsmen walk up to the
beautiful setters which have suddenly dropped
motionless, only quivering a Httle with excite-
ment, it will be three grouse, not ten, that will
rise before them. Should anyone say, how-
KAVEX, CROW, MAGPIE, JAY, AND ROOK. 87
ever, that these birds may as well have died so
as before our gims, we say ' No.' Will any
parent look upon the death of a child that dies
by the chances of war in the prime of life in
the same hght that he regards the death of one
killed by a wild beast in his cradle? And
again, if the grouse which Providence places
on our mountains are to be eaten at all, we
think we make a better use of them if they
are eaten, after being properly cooked, by our
friends, than if we allow them to be swallowed
in their infancy like oysters by ravens, just to
give them an appetite for their piece de resist-
ance^ the braxy sheep on which they will
probably dine before night.
When we reflect that these birds are gifted
with keen powers of vision and great powers of
flight, that after the young leave the nest they
fly about in family parties with nothing to
do through the long summer days but seek
for food, we wonder that any grouse escape
them at all. The fact is that but few do
88 GAME rRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
escape them, and we Lave the raven, et hoc
genus omne^ to thank if grouse are five shil-
lings a brace instead of two shillings a brace in
our markets, and if thousands of square miles
in Scotland still afibrd neither sport nor rental
to their owners. Yet so little is practical
natural history really understood that plenty
of people are agitating even now to make
creatures of this sort more numerous.
To do the raven justice, however, we must
own we have no braver bird, for he will single-
handed attack the eagle, and hunt him clean
out of the country. One day in April, when
watching for falcons near the top of a lofty
mountain, w^e heard sounds that reminded us of
the screams of an African baboon. An eagle
had come too near to a raven's nest, and the male
was driving him away. However high the eagle
ascended the raven was always above him, and
kept dashing down on his back, no doubt giving
him most unpleasant digs with his sharp bill, the
eagle resenting each attack by uttering the most
EAVEN, CKOW, MAGPIE, JAY, AND ROOK. 89
grotesque cries. We watched them till they
were lost to sight in the distance, the raven
returnincf some minutes afterwards at a great
height.
The carrion crow, the hoodie crow, the mag-
pie, and the jay may be classed under one
head. They feed upon the eggs and young of
all the birds which are most useful to man, and
they were evidently intended to keep down
their numbers. When he begins to understand
how to make the best use of the blessings which
surround him, they had better join the masto-
don and the ichthyosaurus. ' Othello's occupa-
tion is gone.' And no services they can
perform as insect-destroyers make amends for
the injuries they commit. Besides, these services
are still better performed by the rook and
starling. Yet Mr. Waterton's disciples are fond
of relating how many carrion crows' nests there
were always at Walton Hall. This is men-
tioned by Mr. A. Ellis and by other witnesses
before this Committee. Did Mr. Waterton or
90 GAME PRESERVERS AXD BIRD PRESERVERS.
any of his friends ever calculate what was likely
to be the smallest number of eggs ever taken
in a breeding season by the very idlest and
least skilful pair of crows in his park ? At
the rate of one nest a week it would amount
to hundreds, and a really energetic crow would
generally find one a day. When as schoolboys
we collected birds' eggs, how we envied these
birds, who had neither morning nor afternoon
lessons, who did not know what out of bounds
meant, and whose life seemed one long whole
hohday ! We hold the opinion that if a man is
so fortmiate as to have such a valuable trea-
sure on his land as a dozen grouse, partridge,
or pheasant eggs, the best possible use he
can make of them is to take what precautions
he may to see that they turn into twelve
beautiful birds. To watch them from the day
they are hatched is most interesting. To follow
them and thin their numbers in autumn will give
him or his friends exercise and amusement,
and his invahd friends, in particular, will be
RAVEN, CROW, JVIAGPIE, JAY, AND ROOK. 91
only too glad to eat tliem. Some people seem
to think the best thing to do with these eggs
is to get them eaten raw by certain black or
black-and-white birds as soon after they are
laid as possible. We differ from them, that
is all.
The numbers of these birds have been so
reduced that their depredations are to a great
extent forgotten. We remember, years ago,
losing a whole brood of chickens by a carrion
crow, and Mr. C. Eussell states that he knew
' ten ducklings carried away by a magpie.' Was
that a desirable state of things.^ We believe
that if Mr. Waterton's system were universally
adopted (and it is worthy either of imitation or
condemnation), in ten years from the present
time it would be difficult to rear either ducks
or chickens unless under nets.
A man once told the judge who sentenced
him to be hanged for sheep-steahng, that he
thought it hard to be hanged for stealing a
sheep. The judge told him he was to be
92 GAME rKESERYEES AND BIRD PEESERVERS.
hanged in order that sheep should not be stolen.
We kill these birds in order that eggs should
not be stolen, and believe we do a rational
action and a kind action to the many that
depend on us for protection. We believe in
the Communistic theory, ' the greatest happiness
of the greatest number,' and do not doubt that
fifty birds live for each crow, magpie, and jay
which our keepers destroy.
We must own we once opened the crops of
some full-fledged young hoodies, and found them
full of insects, principally beetles. But then
their ancestors had eaten eggs for so many
years in that country that there were no
birds left to lay any within three miles of their
nest.
A most serious charQ:e is broucyht as^ainst
the rook by Mr. Scot Skirving. He states
that they ' eat more game eggs than all other
birds on eartli. I have picked up as many
partridge eggs under a rookery as would fill
my hat. Every year we get six or eight
EAVEN, CROW, MAGPIE, JAY, AKD ROOK. 93
pheasants' nests, and, in spite of covering tliem
with grass, the rooks eat them all.' These
birds no doubt are old offenders, who in some
unusually dry year have found out that eggs
are good eating, and never forget it. We would
indulge them. They should find plenty of eggs
and nests ; but there should be a trap at the
entrance of each until w^e had got rid of them
all. Then we would spare the young rooks,
hoping, that when they grew up, they would
not take to such vicious practices.
94 GAME PRESEEVEKS AXD BIED TRESERVERS.
CHAI^TER IX.
THE FOX.
PoxHUNTi^^G lias perhaps never been better
described than by the famous Mr. Jorrocks
when he called it ' the image of war without its
guilt and only 25 per cent, of its danger — a
sport fit for kings ; ' and the huntsman who in
giving the toast, 'Fox-hunting,' said that 'he
knew the men, and horses, and hounds liked
it, and that he thought the foxes did too,' was
much nearer the truth than most people
would think. They exist in Great Britain that
they may be hunted. It is their raison d'etre.
Will any of the gentlemen who write down
foxhunting because it is so cruel a sport hon-
estly ask themselves the question whether, if
THE FOX. 95
tliey were compelled to return to tliis earth
and live as foxes, they would rather live in a
country where foxhounds were kept, or in a
country where there were none ? Can anyone
doubt, if foxhunting could be abolished by law,
that in a few years foxes would be as rare in
England as wolves are now ? Look at the hfe a
fox leads in countries where there are no hounds.
He cannot creep through a fence without fear-
ing to find his leg fast in a trap. He cannot
eat a dead rabbit without fearing strychnine ;
nor can he appear outside a cover without feel-
ing a charge of shot rattle about him, instead
of being greeted with a joyful tallyho.
There is perhaps no happier animal than
the English fox who lives in foxhunting
countries. From the close of the hunting season
till it recommences his life is one round of
enjoyment. He is without an enemy, and fives
without fear in the midst of plenty.
While cubhunting lasts, their numbers are
reduced to a certain extent ; but after that we
96 GAME PRESEEVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
doubt if one out of every five tliat is hunted
is killed, and a fox is very unlucky if hunted
twice in the same season. A hunted fox al-
ways has previously escaped all dangers, and
doubtless, till his powers begin to fail, hopes to
escape again. Then he may pass un mauvais
quart dlieure. But what are his sufferings com-
pared to those
Of suffering, sad humanity,
And tlie afflicted ones who lie
Steeped to the lips in misery,
Longing, yet afraid to die ?
There is a great deal of unnecessary sentimen-
tality wasted about some animals' sufferings,
which are so slight compared to our own.
Look at our cancer and consumption hospitals,
for instance. We doubt if most of us would
not compound for the troubles of various sorts
which pursue us from year's end to year's end
by giving the hounds a run once or twice in a
season, even if we did devoutly pray over niglit
that it might be a bad scenting day, and that
THE FOX. 97
certain of our liard-riding friends might be out
to over-ride tlie hounds and help to save us.
Surely a fox who has escaped towards the
end of the season, and who knows that his side
of the country will not be drawn again for
many months, may exclaim with Pope —
All partial evil is but general good,
as he watches the hounds trot along the road
to draw other covers. It will be a sad day for
'the stately homes of England' if foxhounds
are ever abolished, and we suggest to the
serious consideration of the Secretary of the So-
ciety for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
whether he ought not to bring an action against
Mr. Freeman and other gentlemen who, like him,
try to write down foxhunting, for, if they should
succeed, they will condemn to cruel sufferings,
by poison, trap, and gun, and to extermination,
one of the happiest of our wild animals.
At present, however, the fox exists, and we
have to consider how he is to live to do our
H
98 GAME PEESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
birds tlie least amount of harm ; and no doubt
the one tiling to do is to allow a certain number
of rabbits to breed in his neighbourhood. In
fact, it is only as food for foxes that we would
tolerate these creatiu'es in cultivated districts.
He will eat these and hares, rats, mice, and
frogs, and what few birds he can catch. He
will also take from their nests some hen phea-
sants and partridges ; but we would not give
him much opportunity of doing this, as we
would take all of their nests that we could find
ourselves, and rear their young in a place of
safety. His attacks upon our poultry can always
be prevented by wire netting, and the mesh can
be so large that it is cheap even when six feet
his^h. It is well worth while for hunt clubs to
be at the expense of supplying this wire where
they know that poultry yards are particularly
exposed to the attacks of foxes, and so render
the farmers' wives their friends instead of their
enemies. We know some beautiful pieces of
water, too, on which various sorts of wild fowl
THE FOX. 99
are kept, and the setting ducks are most pro-
voldngly carried off every spring. A few
pounds spent in this wire netting and a few
floating islands would entirely prevent this.
But what can we say for the mountain fox
of the Highlands,
Whom hounds do ne'er pursue,
Who ne'er hears huntsman's halloo ?
Mr. Frank Buckland, in one of his usual
amusing papers a short time ago, describing
what he saw on a visit to one of the Highland
proprietors, published the list of vermin de-
stroyed on this estate, which was shown to him
by the manager, in a single year. At the head
of this list were a number of these foxes ; and
the first thing that would strike most people
would be, how very numerous these creatures
were in spite of all efforts to reduce their
number ; and to wonder what would become of
all the harmless creatures that abounded on
this property, but for the protection man af-
forded them by destroying their destroyers.
H 2
100 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
But Mr. Buckland remarks at the end of his
letter, ' I tokl tliis gentleman he was quite wrong
to kill these birds and beasts, for that he was
interfering with the Balance in Nature.' Had
Mr. Buckland been visiting one of this gentle-
man's ancestors a few hundred years ago, and
had he been shown the hst of wolves which he
had destroyed, would he have made the same
remark, for that was equally interfering with
the balance of Nature ?
We can give no reason why the mountain
fox should ever be spared. He must die when-
ever he may be met with, per fas aut nefas.
He is rarely even seen by man. His presence
in a country is only known by the death and
sufferings of other useful and harmless animals.
He kills our beautiful grouse. We have seen
him when watching deer through a telescope
stalk them and pounce on them. He catches
the old birds at night, particularly in the snow,
where we can see his tracks ; and he takes the
hen on her nest. A keeper of our own one
THE FOX. 101
morning at daylight shot a vixen, returning to
her den, and in her mouth were a hen grouse,
two grouse's eggs, and two frogs. He kills the
hares, but this we could forgive, and the young
fawns.
A keeper in the Lewes once observed a hind
running in a circle and continually jumping
high in the air. He stalked in on her and
found she was defending her fawn from the
attacks of a fox, trying to strike him with her
feet every time he rushed at the fawn. From
the marks on the ground the poor thing must
have been doing this for a long time, and she
was nearly exhausted. Owners of deer-forests
may find they are making a mistake in pre-
serving these animals, as some of them do.
But he also habitually kills lambs when
rearing his own cubs, a thing that the fox of the
Lowlands never does. With mutton at the price
it now commands, there can be no forgiveness
for this crime. Mr. E. Gray, in his evidence,
states that they ' take a sickly lamb in preference
102 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
to a healthy one ; ' but is not this riding a
favourite hobby rather hard ? Certainly Long-
fellow tells US
There is no fold so well tended but one sick lamb is there.
But by what process of natural selection
does the fox discover him and make him his
prey ? Does he hide behind a rock and care-
fully examine the flock on the hill-side till he
discovers this unfortunate little beast, in the
same way that a deer-stalker carefully examines
the herd of deer with his glass until he decides
which is the finest stag? Or is a fox, who
could catch the stoutest wether on the hill in a
few seconds if he wished to do so, supposed to
chase the sheep until, after an arduous run of
some duration, the sick lamb's powers give way
and he falls into the jaws of the then nearly
exhausted pursuer, as some people imagine the
sickly grouse unable to fly as fast as the others
become the prey of the falcon ? But shepherds
tell us that the mountain sheep never run from
THE FOX. 103
the fox or take any more notice of him than
they do of the hare. They are accustomed to
seeing him, and he never runs after them nor
does he bark at them in that rude manner
which they so dishke in the dog. When his
cubs are of an age to requhe lamb he gets the
wind of one sleeping at night beside its dam,
creeps to within springing distance and leaps
upon it. The mother flies into the darkness
from she knows not what, calling to the lamb
to follow, but beyond one pitiful cry it makes
no answer, and it never follows her again.
It is these sheep calling for their lambs at
night that warn the shepherds that the fox is
on their hill. Should the lamb be heavier than
the fox likes, or for some other reason difficult
to explain, he will eat a little bit out of it and
leave it and catch another. It is quite common
to find two or three lambs so left on the hill in
the morning — a pleasant sight for the farmer !
We heard it calculated last summer that one
pair of foxes had in that one season done 80/.
104 GAME PRESERVERS AM) BIRD PRESERVERS.
worth of damage, and it is not unusual to count
twenty and twenty-five lambs' skulls round the
cairns where they rear their young. If this cahn
is discovered by either man or dog, and then left
for even an hour, the old foxes will infalHbly
remove the cubs, generally taking them five or
six miles. We know a good keeper who, un-
expectedly finding a den, kept watch gallantly
for nearly twelve hours until a passing shepherd
came to his assistance. Two or three guns are
generally necessary, as every pass must be
guarded, and before morning the vixen, if
giving suck, will most likely be shot. If the
dog fox has ever been shot at it is almost im-
possible to get him, as he will, whichever way
he may return, invariably make a circuit, and
get the wind before approaching the cairn.
After watching all night one of our keepers
looking round just at daylight saw a fox coming
straight towards him with a lamb in his mouth,
and firing at his head, the lamb received the
charge, as we found by skinning him, and the
THE FOX. 105
fox escaped. The vixen and all tlie cubs but
one were killed on this occasion, but this fox
succeeded in getting this one away and reared
it himself Both father and son, however, were
shot out of another cairn -h.Ye miles off, three
months later, and a No. 2 shot was sticking in
the leg of the old fox below the knee. He no
doubt received this wound when the dead lamb
saved his hfe.
They are easily trapped before they are a
year old. We have known three caught in a
trap baited with the body of one of the same
litter ; but if a fox has once sprung a trap he
will not go near another. We got two good fox-
hounds from one of the established packs, and
tried to run them to ground, but had no success.
The country was so severe that they always
ran quite away from us, and were generally out
all night.
In July 1871 our head keeper was out
with a terrier which bolted an old vixen and
followed her about half a mile, when she turned
106 GAME rRESERVERS AND BIRD TRESERVERS.
to bay. The clog closed with her, but getting
much the worst of the fight was glad at last
to run for it. The fox followed him, repeatedly
bringing him to bay, but the keeper hid in
some tall brackens and the dog coming to him
for protection, he succeeded in shooting her.
She would no doubt ultimately have killed the
dog, and it was the more curious her being so
savage as she had no cubs with her.
Oddly enough, the same man killed another
last year in nearly the same manner, but in this
instance it was a young terrier bitch that bolted
a large dog fox. The terrier had never seen a
fox before, and probably this fox had never
seen a dog. He thought her the most charming
little creature he had ever met with, and they
came back together most lovingly, the fox
running first on one side of her and then on the
other, swinging his brush about and looking as
handsome as possible ; and she played mth him,
and lured him to his doom, as many a heartless
THE FOX. 107
woman has lured many a good man and true
to liis.
It is a curious fact that they will never kill
lambs anywhere near their den. They will
pass through them in all du-ections and go and
bring others a distance of miles. Only last
May we told a farmer there was a litter on
his farm. He said directly, that then he should
lose no lambs this year.
108 GAME PEESEKVEKS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
CHAPTER X.
THE POLECAT, THE STOAT, THE WEASEL, AM)
THE HEDGEHOG.
The Polecat, Stoat, and Weasel belong to the
most blood-thirsty tribe of animals in the world.
We write blood-thirsty, for while most other
beasts of prey kill and eat an animal and are
satisfied for the day, or, as is the case with the
tiger, for several days, these little beasts kill
and drink the blood of any number of creatures
in a few hours, upon which they may once
succeed in fastening their cruel teeth. They
spare neither age nor sex.
The polecat, the largest, is of course the
most mischievous. He ranges over miles of
country. We track him in the snow high on
the mountains, and along the sea-shore as well.
POLECAT, STOAT, WEASEL, HEDGEHOG. 109
Some gentlemen think the larger hawks kill
numbers of polecats. This is setting a thief
to catch a thief. We would save these amateur
policemen their trouble by having scarcely any
for them to catch, though a few will always come
into a country every year, and always by the
same passes. A trap set in certain passes will
produce its annual polecat almost as regularly
as a tree bears its fruit.
When innocent and happy creatures are
protected, and are tolerably numerous, these
animals crowd to the feast from the regions
where they live and breed, and which they have
nearly cleared of animal life.
Catch them as you will, the cry is ' still they
come.' A gentleman not many years ago pur-
chased a large Highland property upon which
Nature had certainly established her own balance,
for man had not interfered within the memory
of men. Eleven out of the first twelve traps his
keepers put down were actually tenanted the
next morning by one or other of these creatures.
110 GAME PRESERVEKS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
Yet SO ill had these animals fulfilled their
part of 'game preserver/ which as one gentleman
tells the Committee is their mission, that these
men were out three days with the dogs before
they saw a single grouse, and partridges were
as nearly extinct. Now fifty brace of either
bird may often be seen in a few hours in this
country.
To call an animal a ' bird preserver '
because he will occasionally destroy another
animal which in an infinitely less degree also
kills birds, seems hardly sound reasoning.
Instead of describing polecats, stoats, and
weasels as living upon rats we should describe
them as living upon birds, hares, and rabbits ;
certainly all the summer months, and sometimes
killing rats when pressed by hunger.
Yet another witness draws a sad picture of
the loss a farmer suffered who stacked his corn
in a corner of a field, hoping that these animals
would take care of it, and found it nearly de-
stroyed by rats.
POLECAT, STOAT, WEASEL, HEDGEHOG. Ill
If a farmer, instead of employing the village
rat-catcher to run his ferrets through a stack
occasionally, trusts that Providence, in this
instance kindly inclining the balance in his
favour, will send such a sufficient number of
stoats and weasels as may exterminate any rats
which may try to breed in it, he does not act
much more wisely than if he trusts to the
natural inequalities in the ground to carry off
superfluous rain, instead of making drains.
One summer day we saw a turkey which
was about six weeks old apparently entangled
in some long grass. Going to help it, we found
a weasel had it by the throat. As it could not
live, we dropped it, and watched with the gun,
and soon, seeing the grass move, shot its
murderer.
A few weeks afterwards a servant found a
large Brahmapootra hen killed by a stoat close
to the house. The stoat had her also by the
throat. Kow, we argue, that if these acts are
committed where these creatmres have been
112 OniE PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
systematically destroyed for years and years,
wliat bird which hves or breeds principally on
the ground would be safe, if, as some natm-ahsts
wish and advise, they were always preserved ?
And one ' cruel ' keeper, the Eev. Mr.
Morris tells us, had actually destroyed fifty-four
in a short time. If they were so numerous,
was not it time for man to interfere ?
But these gentlemen's arguments are un-
inteUigible to us. They wish to preserve birds,
they say ; but they seem much more anxious in
reality to preserve bkds' destroyers.
Let us furnish a stoat with a diary, and with
the power of telling us how he passes a summer
day, and then read what he will probably have
written : —
' Slept rather heavily, having drunk too
much hen-pheasants' blood the evening before,
but went for a stroll about five a.m. I soon
found a yellow-hammer's nest, but, jumping a
little too far, just missed the old hen. However,
I sucked her eggs. Shortly afterwards I
POLECAT, STOAT, WEASEL, HEDGEHOG. 113
winded something in a low old thorn tree, and
climbing up found a nest with four fine young
blackbirds in it, and I made a nice hght break-
fast of their blood and brains. How the old
birds did scream, and what a fuss they made
about it! Perhaps they will remember to
build higher another season. I then made a
neat stalk and killed a skylark, and as the sun
was getting high thought of retiring, when I
came on the fresh track of a hare. I knew her
form would be close by, so followed it in
breathless silence. Sure enough she was sleeping
on the side of an old bank. Getting well above her
I leaped hghtly on to her back, and my teeth were
fast in her neck before she was fairly awake.
Then how the stupid creature screamed and
struggled! Just as if it was of any use! I
suppose she was thinking of her httle ones, for
she was giving suck I afterwards noticed.
However, I left her quiet enough in about ten
minutes. Being rather tired, I had a long and
refreshing sleep under the root of an old tree,
I
114 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
but waking thirsty about three o'clock, went
down to a httle stream and had a drink. Two
ladies were sketching the old bridge, and I
played about opposite them for a little while,
and heard them admire my graceful movements,
and wonder how any man could be barbarous
enough to set a trap for such an interesting
creature.
'Had another long sleep and a pleasant
stroll in the evening, but had not much sport,
a nice covey of partridges giving me my supper
and a quarter of an hour's amusement. The
old birds kept fluttering under my nose, appa-
rently both lame and broken- winged, but I had
been served that trick before, so I only laughed
at them, and managed to cliop eight of the
young ones. Then I retired for the night,
hoping for as happy a day to-morrow.'
Can any of this 'interesting creature's'
friends state that, gifted as he is with keen
powers of scent and an untiring love of lumting,
combining the patience of the hound with the
POLECAT, STOAT, WEASEL, HEDGEHOG. 115
cunning of the cat, he is not likely to meet
with just the creatures we have mentioned in a
summer's clay ? Or will they say, yes, he will
inevitably meet with them, but he will only
admire them, and perhaps play with them a
little ? and then continue his lawful occupation
of limiting and destroying rats.
But look at his first cousin the ferret.
Bear him on bread and milk, and never let
him see a live creature until he is a year old.
Tlien let him find his way one night into a coop
where there are twenty fowls, and will one be
alive in the morning ?
We should think any humane person would
be sorry to see one of these creatures on his
grounds, and would be glad to hear it had been
destroyed.
The hedgehog is the last wild beast on our
list — the ' hypocritical hedgehog,' as Mr. Knox
calls him, and ' the most insatiable of all
ovivorous .British quadrupeds,' whatever his
11 G GAME PKESERVEKS AND BIRD PRESER^TIRS.
well-meaning and amiable friends may say to
the contrary.
Li innumerable instances this little beast has
been detected while destroying eggs and young
birds. Asleep all day, never seen by man im-.
less a dog hunts him out of a hedgerow, he is
busy and active enough all night. Can anyone
doubt that he is continually finding nests, or do
they believe he ever passes an egg without eat-
ing it ?
He has probably no enemy but man, and if
man did not reduce his numbers he would do
incalculable mischief. Our friends the bkds mil
catch all the insects he is supposed to destroy,
and we will most certainly do without him as
far as possible, hoping to see them much more
numerous in his place.
117
CHAPTEE XI.
THE RAT AXD THE CAT.
The rat is perhaps the worst pest we have
to contend against in the present day, and
one of the worst injuries he has done us is in
bringing upon us his supposed antidote, the cat.
He is so clearly a parasite on man, and man has
so abundantly supplied him with food and a
warm and comfortable habitation that his
numbers have increased imtil he is far beyond
the control of his natm'al enemies. We can
fancy the stoat and weasel, with a little as-
sistance from the owl, keeping down the num-
bers of our old English water rat, or the black
rat as he existed a thousand years ago, but
they are powerless against the grey or Hano-
verian rat. Can we fancy stoats and weasels
118 GAME PKESEKYEKS AXD BIRD PRESERVERS.
following tliem up the Paris sewers, for in-
stance ?
One or two gentlemen seem to think that
rats have increased for want of large hawks to
kill them. Why, these birds would have to be
sufficiently numerous to darken the air to be of
the least use. And, as Mr. E. Gray states, ' rats
are not exposed to hawks' attacks.' They are
nocturnal in their|habits for one reason, and
while it is comparatively rare to find a grey rat
one hundred yards from a house it is still rarer
to find one of the larger hawks so near to man's
habitation.
We should have been inclined to hazard the
opinion that our four largest birds of prey, the
eagle, the falcon, the buzzard, and the hen
harrier, have not yet seen a house rat since the
creation, although we have known the two last
named hawks come near enough to the lonely
cottages of the Highland shepherds to carry off
their hens in winter. But Mr. W. C. Angus
says ' he has opened the stomachs of hundreds
THE RAT AND THE CAT. 119
of hawks and found the remains of weasels, rats,
and moles.' Being further questioned, he says
'he has found weasels, rats, and moles in the
stomach of the golden eagle and the peregrine
falcon.' Such a statement seems calculated to
mislead people into the idea that rats are the
habitual food of these birds. Yet we are sure
for every time that Mr. Angus found fur in a
falcon's stomach he has five hundred times
found feathers. We never once saw fur round
their nests. An occasional instance proves
nothing. A bird may have been wounded or
half starved.
If an alderman were shipwrecked on an un-
inhabited island he would probably live upon
the contents of a cask of biscuits which might
be washed ashore. But the scientific gentle-
man among a party of savages, who might ex-
amine him after his friends who happened to
land on that island had killed him for their
supper, would, w:e know, arrive at an erroneous
conclusion if he entered it in his note-books as
120 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
a fact that the animal ' alderman ' lived entirely
on dry biscuit.
Yet these statements may give some
farmers the impression that game preservers
encourage rats. They are their sworn enemies,
and though it is not a keeper's business to
follow the rats and hunt them out of a
farmer's ricks and barns, when they in tlie sum-
mer months venture out into the hedgerows, he
always sees tliat they are destroyed as far as
is possible.
A rat eats and kills everything a man
does not want eaten or killed. He does those
things he ought not to do, and doubtless
leaves undone other things. We must study
how to destroy him, for man lives as much by
destroying the creatures which injure him as by
encouraging those which are useful to him.
If rat-catching is not strictly one of the learned
professions, still no stupid man ever shone in it,
and a good rat-catcher is a blessing to his parish.
If we had many sons to bring out in the world
THE RAT AND THE CAT. 121
we are not sure we would not bring one of
them up to this profession. There is a subdued
excitement about rat-hunting which is not un-
23leasant. We think we should prefer it to
reading for the law, for instance.
As bird preservers we must kill rats, for
they eat every egg and kill every bird they can
get at. The rat asphyxiator seems a splendid
invention, and mucli as we fear and hate poison
it is sometimes the only remedy. But people
are so fearfully careless. We lost the best re-
triever we ever owned or saw through a friend
putting her into an outhouse where strychnine
had been laid a month previously for rats. We
knew some phosphoric paste spread on some
bread and butter and afterwards accidentally
thrown out, and eaten by a terrier. The owner
saw the dog eat the poison and gave him a
violent emetic and saved him. But a brood of
ducks ate the poison after the dog had brought
it up, and were all dead the next morning, and
oddly enough several rats eat the dead ducks
122 GAME rRESERVERS AXD BIHD PRESERVERS.
and were found lying dead round them. This
happened to the head forester on our shooting
manor in 1870. But rats must be killed in the
winter when they are driven into our houses,
and before the next breeding season. Let men
lie awake at night and invent all possible means
of destroying them. Any means are better
than depending on cats. The remedy is then
worse than the disease ; while to depend upon
golden eagles and peregrine falcons becoming
sufficiently numerous to habitually fly round our
barns and ricks and kill our rats for us, will be,
we fear, to lean upon a broken reed.
We must encourage the rat-catcher, and we
would pay him on the same principle upon which
the Emperors of China used, we believe, to pay
their physicians. These gentlemen had large in-
comes as long as he continued in good health,
but their pay stopped directly he was unwell,
and their heads were all cut off on the day on
which he died, no questions being asked, and
THE RAT AND THE CAT. 123
no excuses listened to. A man cannot be ex-
pected to wish for the extermination of an
animal by whose presence on our farms he gets
his living. He should have something hand-
some a year if we never saw a rat, half this if
a few appeared until they disappeared again,
and nothing, and we would employ some one
else, if they became troublesome.
The wild cat is, we believe, becoming rather
more numerous than it used to be owing to its
being allowed to breed undisturbed in our deer-
forests. We killed two which came close to the
house and carried off our tame ducks.
But the house cat is nearly as destructive.
How any person can pretend to care for birds,
and yet harbour and encourage cats is one of
those enigmas we cannot understand. What
should we think of a superior race of beings
who pretended great affection for us, and
passed laws for our protection, yet who each of
them kept one or two tame tigers, giving them
their liberty with the certain knowledge that
124 GAME PRESERVERS AXD BIRD PRESERVERS.
tliey were destroying us, our Avives, and
cliildren every day ?
We tax the useful dog. Wliy cannot we
liave a cat tax ? It would do more to increase
tlie numbers of our birds than any law. Do
•cats give birds a close time from March to
August ? They render night hideous to man
in towns, and day and night terrible to birds in
the country.
Our gardens and pleasure-grounds, which
might be paradise to our birds, are shunned on
account of their presence. What would the
Garden of Eden have been to Adam if there
were a couple of lions in it ? We may be sure
that after they were brought to him to name
they were taken outside again directly, and that
the gate was shut securely. Several gentlemen
mention cats to the Committee, and ]\ir.
Vivian, Mr. Champion Eussell, and Mr. Johns
all tell us the only way in which cats ought to
be kept in the summer. After April 1st their
cats are chained. A ring at the end of the
THE RAT AND THE CAT. 125
chain runs along a wire, stretched from one
end of the garden to the other. They have a
little house at each end of the wire, and they
walk up and down and defend any seeds or
fruits which it may be desirable to defend from
birds.
Mr. Vivian pathetically laments ' he cannot
more freely kill his neighbours' cats.' We
heartily sympathise with him.
Many ladies are subscribers to the Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals yet
keep cats themselves. Do they realise that
nearly every day in the summer these beasts
kill a bird, and the little ones are left to starve
in their nests ?
We have heard that in JSTew Zealand
already a curious ground parrot has become
nearly extinct owing to the numbers killed by
the settlers' cats.
Mice are easily caught in traps, and who ever
knew a farm kept clear of rats by cats ? We
have often thoudit the more cats the more rats.
126 GAME TRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
All the summer montlis cats are too busy
killing birds to meddle with them. And they
bite and birds do not. Few would believe the
distance cats travel. We have met them three
miles from home. In the Highlands we would
not let a cottage or croft except on the con-
dition that no cats were kept, if we paid a few
shillings a year extra.
These shepherds' cats all get their own
living, and they kill every partridge and every
grouse which tries to breed within a mile of
their houses.
Grouse constantly come into the peat bogs
to breed, but before they have been there a
month one or other bird is sure to be taken.
One gentleman thinks it most hard ' that cats
cannot visit his neighbours' woods without being
killed or maimed by the keepers.' Does he ever
ask himself what these cats go to the woods for ?
Certainly not to catch rats and mice, which are
far more numerous close at home. They go to
kill our birds which we pass laws to protect,
THE RAT AXD THE CAT. 127
but any creature which will kill a bird finds a
friend and advocate in the Eev. Mr. Morris.
And they will breed in our woods. Are they
to have a close time ? And may we thin their
numbers afterwards if ' inconveniently nume-
rous ? ' And if so how ?
We wish to kill them in the most humane
way possible, though a cat six or eight hours in
a trap probably does not suffer so much as she
has made some other poor creature suffer on
nearly every day of her wicked life.
Let their friends invent a trap which will
annihilate them the moment they touch it, or a
poison so delicious that they cannot resist it,
and so subtle that it will send them directly
into a sweet sound sleep, from which they will
never waken, and we will gladly use these
things. Until they do this, we will kill them as
best we can, because we love birds better than
we love them. When natural history begins to
be really taught in our schools, and people learn
to know the value of birds and the worthless
128 GAME PRESERVERS AXD BIRD PRESERVERS.
ness of cats, any cat found at large in the sum-
mer months will be destroyed as a matter of
course.
At the present time some well-meaning but,
we think, not very wise individuals represent a
man as a sort of barbarian if he kills one of
these cruel, destructive beasts.
129
CHAPTEE Xn.
THE GROUSE.
The red grouse is about tlie best game bird
in the whole world, and deserves all the care
we can bestow upon him. No agriculturist,
however opposed to game generally, has ever
pretended that the grouse does him any injmy,
while his presence on our hills adds to the
amusement or to the income of our land-
owners in a quite extraordinary manner. A
proprietor may calculate on receiving about
11. a brace for all the grouse his land will
produce, if they are only found in sufficient
numbers to make it worth while to pursue
them at all ; but this makes all the difference.
There are always gentlemen to be found
willing to pay 100/. for a month's run in our
K
130 GAJklE PRESERVERS AKD BIRD PRESERVERS.
beautiful Highlands with the certainty of bag-
ging at the least 100 brace of grouse, and a
moor which produces 500 brace in a season,
particularly with a mixture of other game, will
command 500/. a year. But grouse shooting
where there are no grouse is the play of
Hamlet with the part of Hamlet left out,
although men can enjoy themselves without
making heavy bags. We think there is more
pleasure in bringing home twenty-five brace
with the help of excellent dogs, by using
straight powder, and really walking for some
six or seven hours, killing perhaps half of
what we see, than in bagging four times that
number where the birds are gathered together
so thick that the dogs are pointing before they
can canter one hundred yards. But men and
dogs will not work to kill an occasional old
cock bird or to murder two or three brace
of unfortunate barren birds. After the second
or third day some excuse is made. Fishing
or boating is proposed. The work is too hard
THE GKOUSE. 131
where there is so Httle seen to keep up the
excitement.
There are no class of men whose opinions
we find it so hard to understand as those who
are fond of writing to the papers condemn-
ing as ' cruel ' all who make large bags of
game. That men should object to find plea-
sure in a pursuit which entails the shedding of
blood we can quite understand ; but these gen-
tlemen all boast that they are sportsmen them-
selves, only of the good old manly school they
think. They never hire a moor, partly because
they object to pay the rent. They consider
keepers useless and still more cruel than their
employers. We will follow for one day two
of these gentlemen who are making an orni-
thological and sporting tour in August. They
have a useful dog with them who never goes
fast enough to tire himself, so he gets through
a good many hours after a fashion. They
easily get leave to have a day's shooting on
one of the large islands in the Hebrides, as the
1:2
132 GAIklE PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
owner well knows there is but little to shoot
on it. They are in luck to-day, however, and
before long find a brace of grouse and bag
them, and presently another brace, and these
also fall. One of them observes it must have
been a bad breeding season. But these birds
had had their eggs taken by the hoodie crow
whose nest they had seen in the birch wood
they had come through. The dog stands
again after they get on to higher ground,
and four birds rise and they kiU them all,
for they can shoot a Httle if birds rise near
them and they are not flurried. This is de-
lightful, but these are the remains of a fine
brood of ten. The falcon, who breeds on the
opposite island, found them out a month ago
and has reduced their numbers. They both
miss a snipe, and then each kills a hare, but
they only see and bag one more brace of
grouse. The ravens, whose voices they so
admired as they rose from the carcase of a
dead sheep, had swallowed these poor birds'
THE GROUSE. 133
young ones when they were a week old. And
these gentlemen return home dehghted with
their sport. As they will often tell their
friends, they shot at thirteen head and bagged
twelve. How different to the barbarous sports-
men who, they will hear, on the same day, a
few miles off, bagged thirty brace of grouse.
Yet they have done a very cruel action, and
have interfered with the balance of Nature with
a vengeance, for those few poor grouse hap-
pened to be hterally all that were left alive in
that part of the country, and it will be many a
day before the cheerful crow of the grouse
cock will be heard again on those hills.
One gentleman, being asked by Mr. Stiurt,
' Are you a game preserver ? ' replies, ' Yes.'
Being asked if he preserves birds of prey in
the next question, he replies, ' Yes, everything :
eagles, peregrine falcons, and merlins.'
We think this gentleman would have an-
swered the first question more correctly if he
had rephed, ' No, I am a game destroyer. I
134 G.OIE PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
hate game birds, and kill them when I can get
near them in the autumn myself, and welcome
on my land any creatures which will tear them
to pieces all the rest of the year, or, if they
can only swallow their eggs and newly-hatched
young, like the raven, I am delighted to see
them.'
Yet, thanks to an entirely different poHcy
having been adopted probably for the last
twenty years on the property he shoots over,
and to his neighbours following a different
pohcy, this gentleman has still a good deal of
game on his ground, in the same way that Mr.
Waterton, while doing his best to encourage
all the creatures which destroy that triumph
of acclimatisation, the pheasant, could always,
thanks to his neighbours, boast that he had
some in his park and on his table.
When we take to preserving their enemies
we will certainly cease to shoot them ourselves,
and will carry a walking-stick instead of a
THE GROUSE. 135
breecli-loader when we visit tliem in their
mountain homes.
It is not in the number of birds which a
man kills in a day that the cruelty of shooting
consists, but in the fact whether he has or has
not previously given them such protection
from their numerous enemies as to justify
him in kiUing this number. If he does not
protect them, he cannot kill a single game bird
without throwing his weight into the scale
against a persecuted, harmless race which can
scarcely maintain their existence as it is. No
bird requires help from man more than the
grouse, and their preservation is well under-
stood in many parts of Scotland and in York-
shire, where that national loss, a grouse killed
in the spring months, is never known; but
in Argyllshire their remains are scattered
all through the hills, and landowners wonder
their land is not worth shooting over ; but as
they know it never has been, they are con-
tented that it never should be. Yet wherever
136 GAiyiE PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
there is heather, whether one thousand feet
above the sea, or on great boggy flats almost
below the sea level, the landowners have only
themselves to thank for lack of grouse which,
if not as numerous as in Perthshire, might be
still numerous enough to give first-rate sport.
Many have no keepers. The shepherds have
a Httle something a head for any crows they
may catch. Others, perhaps, have one man to
30,000 acres, and though there are plenty of
excellent men among these, not a few literally
never set foot on the moors from the day the
sportsmen cease to shoot in October until about
a fortnight before his return in August. Then
they go out a little with the dogs, and appear
full of information about where the birds are.
They trap the weasels round the stone dykes,
and stalk the crows on the seashore. But they
never dream of following the falcon to her
eyrie, perhaps -B.Ye miles off, and watching day
by day in March winds and rain till they kill
her ; or of building a hiding-place, and waiting
THE GROUSE. 137
for the hen harriers, which come each year and
breed on their ground. These large hawks
kill two-thirds of the grouse which are trying
to breed in the country, and the keepers know
no more about what they are doing than the
lessee at his club in London.
The grouse require what the Committee
would give by law to all sorts of little birds —
' a close time, when they can breed in peace '
in the spring.
And they require food and a home, and this
the heather would give them ; but as if man's
only aim was to drive them out of the country,
he burns this over their heads.
Sheep and grouse require exactly the same
management with heather — a constant suc-
cession of young heather, secured by judicious
burning. This is perfectly understood in most
parts of Scotland, and the heather is burnt in
strips. In Argyllshire there is a clause in the
farmers' leases about burning a tenth of the
heather, but it is a dead letter. Each shepherd
138 GAME PRESERVERS AKD BIRD PRESERVERS.
burns what the wind and a box of kicifers will
enable him to burn. Wliole tracts of thirty-
acres are burnt down till they would not shel-
ter a lark.
And again, with a rainfall of nearly 100
inches per annum, draining, even open surface
draining, is for miles and miles not attempted ;
and though grouse will hve and thrive in actual
bogs, where there are a constant succession
of hillocks and ridges always dry, they will not
stay on a dead level, to be for a week at a time
ankle deep in water. They leave, and finding
land in a condition more worthy of the nine-
teenth century they never return.
Were the respectable barbarians who
owned many of these Western Highlands es-
tates a thousand years ago, to return to them
to-morrow, they could almost fancy they had
only been asleep for a week. Nothing has
been done, except to cut down most of the oak
and birch woods they used to hunt the roe deer
in, not a tree being planted in their place,
THE GROUSE. 139
not a drain cut, not only no roads or pony-
paths, but not even footpaths made through
the mountain, and in a country where the very
shepherds are constantly lost in the mist. Es-
tates change hands, but years pass by and
nothing is done. It is the very land of the
' lotos-eaters,' where it is ' always afternoon,'
and this within twenty-foin^ homes' journey of
London.
The grouse disease has not yet appeared in
the Western Highlands, and this is an inesti-
mable advantage, and there the scenery is as
fine as any in Scotland. The grouse also do
not pack, and, except in very stormy weather,
always lay well to dogs. We have known
one gun bag twenty and a half brace in the
middle of November in a few hours, and a man
who has done this over two brace of quite first-
rate dogs has perhaps had as good sport as dog
and gun can give.
If the proprietors would for seven years
see that the heather was burnt under the direc-
140 GAME PKESERVERS A.'NJ) BIRD PRESERVERS.
tion of some confidential person, or if tliey gave
their tenants notice that their leases would not
be renewed if they did not manage to bum the
heather as it is bimit in other parts of Scotland,
it would treble the stock of grouse.
And let them take measures to find out if
the grouse on their estates are allowed to Hve
to breed. It does not follow that they are
allowed because a man who is called a game-
keeper lives on some part of the estate.
As a single instance of the difference this
makes, we may mention that we knew there
were more than twenty brace in March on the
beat the falcons cleared for us in 1871. Yet
we found but fifteen of these birds ahve in
August, and with only one late-hatched brood
among them. To effect this ruin these hawks
had only in the four months to kill twenty-
five birds — about three a month to each
hawk. There were neither crows nor any
other vermin in that part of the country. Had
these twenty brace bred in peace we should
THE GEOUSE. 141
have found at least sixty brace on the day we
shot over that ground, and probably have
bagged thirty brace out of them.
Grouse will occasionally rear ten young
ones, but they average from three to six young
birds to each pair, accordmg to the season. It
is very rare for them not to bring up even one
or two in the worst seasons. When barren
braces are met with it is nearly always caused
by then: first mates having been killed or their
eggs having been eaten. Yet when grouse
have not been numerous enough to make it
worth while for gentlemen to go after them, we
have known the keepers often sent out to shoot
these barren braces for not breeding, under the
idea that they must be very old birds.
As a proof that fair sport may be obtained
where ground has always been considered as
not worth shooting over, we shot over a beat
on August 20, 1869, and did not in the whole
day even see a single grouse, but in 1873 one
gun bagged eighteen brace in a few hours on
that same beat.
142 GAME PRESERVEKS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
But to make fair bags in tlie Western High-
lands good fast dogs are indispensable. They
must range far and wide, or you will not find
half the birds. We always took out six in the
hot w^eather, and never let a brace run for more
than an hour at a time. When a man tells us
that his dogs are never tired, we know that they
must go at the pace of a tired dog all day.
There is as much difference in the pleasure of
shooting to these fast, brilliant dogs, instead of
to the slow, old-fashioned potterers, as there is
between riding a cob or a thoroughbred hack.
The best dogs we have seen were a first cross
between the Lavrack and Gordon breeds.
Then there is such a variety of game in this
part of Scotland, that from August till February,
weather permitting, dogs may be finding game
of some sort every day in the week. The extent
of many of these estates is so great that we
never, unless the weather was most unfavourable
the first time, shot over a grouse-beat twice in
one season ; so, if we could perfectly protect
THE GROUSE. 143
them, the grouse had a happy life three hundred
and sixty four days in the year.
Woodcock, though not so numerous as
in Ireland, often give good sport. On the
evening of the fourth day's frost we once had
fifty-eight on the hall table, besides other
game, and we knew a man fire 150 shots at
them on another occasion in four days.
But it is the presence of grouse on the
ground which will regulate the amount of
shooting rental which an estate will command ;
and we repeat, if a man has heather and has
not grouse on his land it is his own faidt.
144 GMIE PRESERYEES AM) BIRD PRESERVERS.
CHAPTEE XIII.
THE BLACK GROUSE AND THE PARTRIDGE.
IToTHiK^G has surprised us more than to find
that that fine bird the black grouse is hterally
not mentioned in all this evidence. Not a
natiurahst has a word to say for him, while the
disappearance of such birds as the siskin or
garden warbler is constantly regretted, and we
ransack other countries and import and try to
acclimatise quails and let this splendid creature
become extinct. There can be no reason why
he should not be fairly numerous in at least
half our English counties and in many parts of
Ireland. Heather is not a necessary of hfe to
him. Give him a rushy grass field to be hatched
and reared in, a corn-field to spend the autumn
evenings upon, and a snug birch wood where
THE BLACK GROUSE AND THE PARTRIDGE. 145
he can find food and shelter in the winter
days, and he is content. We should like to see
a three years' jubilee given to these birds in the
English counties where they are still to be met
with. There were a few near Aldershot in 1862,
but the young broods were all shot down when-
ever they were found. It seems most unfair
to commence shooting them on August 20.
They are hatched on the same date as the
pheasant and do not acquire their full size or
perfect plumage any sooner, and the grace they
get by ceasing to shoot them on December 10
is of little use to them.
Perhaps their management is better under-
stood and they are more numerous in Dumfries-
shire than in most places. In October, when
they are fine strong birds, a party sometimes
kill 200 brace in a week in that county. We
love to see them, particularly in the spring ; and
to creep near a party of old cocks, and watch
them strutting about like turkey-cocks with their
wings and tails spread out, is most amusing.
h
146 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
We know that the Enghsh climate suits
these birds, and that they can hold their own
against their natural enemies as well as the
partridges, for they live through the winter in
the Highlands without the least help from man.
There is but one reason, and an all-sufficient
one, why they have nearly disappeared. Because
men shoot them down before they are much
more than half grown whenever they meet with
them. Mr. Knox strongly advocated their in-
troduction into Ireland some years ago. We
never heard if this had been done, but there
cannot be any great difficulty in doing so, as
they are more easily reared tame than pheasants,
being much less susceptible to cold and damp,
and thriving on exactly the same food, particu-
larly ants' eggs. As they are polygamous they
ought to lay in confinement, but we cannot state
if they will do this, having three years in suc-
cession been unfortunate with ours. In the first
season rats carried off eight when they were about
six weeks old. The next year we reared nine-
I'HE BLACK GROUSE AND THE PARTRIDGE. 147
teen, and the cocks were acquiring their black
feathers in the beginning of August, when a cat
found them out, and having reduced their num-
bers to thirteen, these were for seciu"ity put into
a large open wire pheasantry, which was removed
on to fresh ground on puqDose. They all sickened
and died in about three weeks ; so it would
appear they will not bear confinement, when
young at any rate, although an old black cock,
who, to escape from a falcon, found his way
into our kitchen by smashing a pane of glass,
has Hved many months happily in a pheasantry.
Their foster-brothers, some pheasants confined
at the same time and in the same place, throve
well. This year we meant to leave them at
liberty until November ; but some wild black
game unexpectedly joined them early in October
and decoyed ours away. We have but little
doubt that they could be kept when their man-
agement was understood, and each hen would
probably lay about twenty eggs. They would
be a charming addition to our game birds in
L 2
148 GAME PEESERVERS AM) BIRD PRESERTERS.
many parts of England where tliey are^now
never seen.
The partridge is perhaps as numerous in
many parts of England as it well can be ; but
a sad change has come over it. The change
in our system of cultivation has changed its
habits, and it no longer gives us the sport with
dogs which used to constitute the charm of
partridge shooting. This cannot possibly be
helped, and we must accept the situation and
make the best of it.
Partridges must be driven in most of our
counties, and let those who ridicule the sport
come and show us how to kill them. There
is no such difficult shooting, and more shots
are fired with less result at driven partridges
than at any other game in any part of the
world.
A very great mistake, which several gentle-
men make, we believe, is that it is an injury to
a breed of birds to kill the old birds.
The French, who quite eclipse us in making
THE BLACK GROUSE AND THE PARTRIDGE. 149
poultry pay, never let a domestic hen live over
sixteen months. They lay less eggs every year
after the first, and get tougher and of less value
for the table. We find it answer well to kill
all oiu: turkey hens the second year. The
quantity of grouse and partridge has notably
increased on many moors and manors since
driving was introduced, entirely owing to the
old birds being so generally shot.
It is well known that if a moor or manor is
fully stocked, and is not shot over at all, at
the end of two or three years the birds will
have very much decreased in numbers. This
is owing to the old birds driving away the
young ones and not breeding themselves. It is
difficult to prove, but we doubt if a cock grouse
or partridge rears a brood after the second or
third year. He makes vows of eternal devotion,
which last a fortnight, to first one hen and then
another. These hens,- being forsaken, forsake
their eggs, for birds that pair will rarely hatch
and rear a brood alone. Old cock grouse are
150 GAME PRESERVEKS 'AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
killed as vermin by many people who know
what they are about.
Gentlemen who do not want to shoot their
partridges until the end of September w^hen
they return from Scotland, would, we beheve,
nearly double their bag if they had all the first
nests taken and reared under hens. The ex-
pense is small, as these birds so soon get theii^
own living. These tame reared birds would
hardly have joined the wild birds, and though
they w^ould be difficult enough to get near,
would scarcely behave as disgracefully as they
so generally do now ; and the wild birds would
nearly all lay again, and their young, though
quite strong by October 1, would not be so wild
as their first hatch. Partridges soon get shy.
We remember a lot of forty some years ago
which we thought we could bag any day we
pleased. But the first shot altered matters, and
we never bagged a bird till they came out of a
wood one day in December.
Partridges and all game birds travel and fly
THE BLACK GROUSE AND THE PARTRIDGE. 151
distances whicli few would believe. Two years
ill succession a large number were reared in
the Lewes from imported eggs. They were
constantly seen in the country all through the
winter ; but in pairing time each year the whole
of them left the island, and the nearest land is
forty miles off.
In the Highlands they give capital sport
with dogs in the winter, where they are cared
for and protected. They are extinct on many
estates. Every patch of cultivation will be fre-
quented by at least a pair, and these will rear
large coveys. But every cultivated field is
somewhere near a house — possibly a lonely
shepherd's house, — and one or two cats are kept
in each house. These as regularly kill one or
both of every pair of partridges which try to
breed on these fields, as the falcons break up
every pair of grouse. By stopping the depre-
dations of these beasts we got up a nice head of
partridges in every direction. On the last five
days of January we once bagged ninety, all
152 GAME! PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
over dogs. Thougli wild, and seldom rising
within thirty yards, they were still to be got
when driven into the heather, and they made
a nice addition to the winter shooting.
We seldom shot a bird till November.
Partridges require protection nearly as much as
grouse. They do not seem to be plentiful on
the Continent generally, and though they and
pheasants might be eaten in millions by men in
most parts of Europe, their management is so
little understood that tliey are comparatively
rare. •
It is perhaps also caused a little by the idea
that if these birds are preserved hares and
rabbits must also be preserved, and these do
serious damage to the farmer and injure the
cause of game-preserving all over the world.
The partridge loves cultivated land. In
Europe, Asia, and Africa he finds it out and
comes to it, and instead of being encouraged is
generally exterminated. Yet he is a friend to
the farmer, eating millions of the most destruc-
THE BLACK GROUSE AXD THE PARTRIDGE. 163
tive insects. Perhaps England is the only
country in the world where they are prosperous
and happy. In other countries, if man does not
destroy them himself in their breeding season,
he allows their enemies to do so.
Through the whole of India, from where we
left the railway, seventy miles from Bombay,
to where we joined it three years later, two
hundred miles from Calcutta, we never found
the beautiful painted partridge or the common
partridge at all numerous, although they scarcely
ever died by the hand of man.
The grandsons of our present merchant
princes will, no doubt, preserve large tracks in
India, for sport the Anglo-Saxon must and will
have, and they wiU bag 150 brace of peacocks
a day and send them home in ice by the
Persian railway. We should like nothing better
than to preserve certain tracks of country we
remember. Visiting our traps would require
caution — a young tiger in one, an hysena in
the other,— and the services of the real tisrer
154 G.yHE PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
terrier would be required. A friend of ours
brought home a curious httle nondescript dog,
and when asked what it was, he always said,
' it was the real tiger terrier of Central India,*
and it did not seem to occur to one person in
ten who asked the question, how ridiculous the
idea was that such a little creature could be
used against tigers.
But it is at the Cape of Good Hope also
that some little knowledge of bird preserving is
really required, for that fine francolin called the
red-winged partridge, nearly as large as a
grouse, and as well behaved before dogs, is fast
disappearing from hundreds of miles of country.
In very many places, where twenty years ago
ten and twelve brace could be bagged at the
beginning of the season, they are now never seen.
Ammunition was scarce, and the farmers used
to reserve theirs for bucks, never wasting it on
birds ; and they had no dogs which would find
these partridges, which lie very close. Now,
officers have imported so many that there is
THE BLACK GEOUSE AND THE PARTRIDGE. 155
tolerable good blood all over the country, and
the farmers and theh^ friends from the towns
kill all they can. But they grudge a charge of
powder to shoot the great hawks which come
round, even following the dogs and catching the
birds before their eyes. They have joined the
francolin's enemies and turned the balance, and
the extinction of these birds is the result.
They come to all the fields where the
Kaffirs grow their Indian corn, and would breed
in them, but the boys kill them all. These
savages all throw sticks with great precision,
and each man or boy carries three or four.
We have seen them kill the smallest birds on
the wing ; and w^hen they have marked a part-
ridge into some long grass, a few of them sur-
round him, and he has no more chance of
escape than if they were armed with guns.
The red-wing and the grey- wing partridge,
a smaller bird, but faster on the wing [Fran-
colinus Levantillii^ and Francolinus Afer\ are
rapidly retiring before man, instead of prospering
156 GAME TRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
tlirougli his cultivation of tlie soil, and they
take refuge on the grassy ridges of the moun-
tain ranges. Here, miles from either rocks or
trees* which shelter their enemies, they breed
in peace, and a couple of guns, if fortunate
enough to have first-rate dogs with them, can
bag from twenty to thirty brace in a day. This
is in every respect as enjoyable sport as grouse-
shooting.
The mountain scenery reminds one of Scot-
land ; only we have the certainty of fine weather,
and firm turf, on which a horse can gallop
under our feet.
We wonder none of the farmers in South
Africa have taken to preserving ; so many
birds would thrive in that lovely climate. Yet
pheasants are not even introduced yet, unless
there are a few near Cape Town, and the wild
guinea-fowl, and another francolin {F. clamator),
which loves the woods, would soon increase
immensely.
The guinea-fowl, however, does great injury
THE BLACK GROUSE AND THE PARTRIDGE. 157
to many crops, while the partridge never does
any harm, and well repays a little assistance.
To take an instance, we will only suppose a
man, in any part of the world, has ten pair on
his ground in the spring. He leaves them to
take care of themselves, not interfering with
the balance of Nature. A prowhng cat kills
five or six. A crow robs three of their nests,
and a sparrow-hawk and a weasel so thin the
numbers of the others that there are but twenty
again left ahve by next spring. But in the
winter this man has learnt a little practical
natural history, and he takes measures to
destroy four creatures — a cat, a crow, a hawk,
and a weasel. His partridges enjoy a peaceful,
prosperous summer, and rear an average of
ten birds to each pair, and he is able in the
autumn to put one hundred delicious birds on
his table which hcive not cost him a penny.
We think he lias acted rationally.
158 GAME PRESERVERS XSB BIRD PRESERVERS
CHAPTER XIV.
THE PHEASANT.
The pheasants form such a splendid addition
to our hst of British birds that we cannot un-
derstand how any gentleman who is fond of
birds can be satisfied if he has not a consider-
able number on his estate. They might easily
be twenty times as numerous as they are, when
they would be sold at a price that would put
them within reach of hundreds who now never
taste them ; but the unsatisfactory state of the
law is no doubt one reason why they are not
encouraged in many places as they deserve to
be. We can never see any reason why all
birds should not be made the property of the
owner or occupier of the land, as much as liis
cows and pigs. The Game Laws are called a
relic of feudal times, but it is the extraordinary
THE PHEASANT. . 159
idea which some people hold that, because
certain birds which do not belong to them,
happen to be rather difficult to catch, as well
as excellent eating, they may come and catch
them and carry them off, which is really a relic
of very old times. Of times when
Deeds were many and men were few.
When
Wild in woods the noble savage ran.
A North American Indian, who came and
settled in one of our midland counties, and saw
flocks of turkeys feeding in the stubbles, would
think it an intolerable injustice that he might
not kill and eat these birds when he pleased ;
and our own noble savages think it equally
hard that they may not kill and sell our
pheasants whenever they require either amuse-
ment combined with excitement, or a httle
money, and they find plenty of people, who
ought to know better, to pity them if they are
punished for doing this. A gentleman may
have turkeys, fowls, and pheasants roosting in
the trees round his house. If a stranger takes
160 GA]\IE PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVER
either of the first-named birds he is a con-
temptible thief, but though the pheasant has
cost as much to rear as the other birds, if he
takes him -he is only a poacher — rather an in-
teresting character, and to be screened from
punishment if possible.
We know a farmer in Warwickshire who
owns some land which runs between two
estates, and the owners of both these estates
preserve, and one of them rears a large num-
ber of pheasants, and this man scatters a little
food on his side of the hedge, fills the hedge
with traps, and catches scores of his neighbour's
birds. Yet, if he were to catch his neighbour's
hens in this manner he w^ould be thought a
thief.
If pheasants were much more generally
reared than they are, an Englishman's natural
respect for property and sense of justice would
soon set this right, and it is a pity there should
be a single cover in the whole country without
a nice sprinkling of these birds ; and every
THE PHEASAIsT. 161
farmer's daughter, where he has the right of
shooting, ought to rear him fifty or a hundred
birds every year, if he has only ten acres of
cover. They are a beautiful ornament to our
parks and pleasure-grounds ; and a never-tiring
amusement on every winter's morning used to
be to watch a party of all sorts, gold, silver, pied,
Chinese, and ring-necked, which lived in per-
fect freedom, and assembled regularly for their
breakfast within thirty yards of our windows.
The gold pheasants used to arrive, escorting
their hens with great pomp and ceremony.
There is no vainer bird than a gold pheasant,
and the way he is always displaying his beauti-
ful neck-feathers to the hen is most amusing.
Then a party of cocks would come from some
distance, with a great amount of crowing and
fluttering of wings. These were all-important
people — heavy swells, in fact. Then a silver
cock would stroll calmly up. He is a most
aristocratic bird, but often gave offence to the
others, and was probably soon engaged in an
M
162 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
afiair of lionour with a gentleman witli a ring
round his neck. The wilder birds would ar-
rive quietly on foot. These were the poor rela-
tions, and they did not seem quite sure of their
welcome ; but there would be more than fifty
by the time the keeper appeared with the corn,
when a few old favourites would run to his feet,
the greater numbei: disappearing in great pre-
tended alarm, only to return in a few seconds.
We feared no poachers but cats and stoats, and
except on the other side of a loch two miles
wide no guns but our own were ever fired
within eight miles in every direction.
If pheasants are to appear on our tables in
any number — and we fancy few really wash to
banish them — they must be reared under do-
mestic hens, and then left in a state of freedom.
When fit to kill, whether they shall all be
driven into nets and have their necks twisted, or
whether they shall be shot at, when at least
thirty per cent, will probably escape, is surely
for the owner to decide. If he shoots them he
THE PHEASANT. 163
will be called cruel by certain newspaper writers.
If the writer were a pheasant, would he really
prefer the netting process, and the impossibility
of escape ? We fancy not. We know if we were
to be hatched as a pheasant, we should be un-
iilial enough to hope sincerely that our poor
mother might have her nest robbed, and we
might be hatched by a hen. It is curious what
bad mothers they are. While we have often
known a partridge rear her whole seventeen, a
pheasant in a rough country will scarcely on an
average rear more than three. We saw one
cross a wide drain, and go on with two which
had crossed where it was narrow, leavinsf six
to die if we had not rescued them.
Two or three gentlemen tell the Committee
that Mr. Waterton had plenty of pheasants. If
he put down food, and never disturbed his covers,
a certain number of his neighbours' birds would
find their way there, no doubt ; but if his
woods were the refuge for all the stray cats and
stoats in the country, and if his park was full
m2
164 GAME PRESERVERS AXD BIRD PRESERVERS.
of crows, magpies, and jays, we can scarcely
believe that any number of pheasants were
reared on his ground, for you cannot both ' eat
your cake and have it.'
A non-sporting visitor, taken out in the
evening to see thirty or fort}^ pheasants feed-
ing round the woods, w^ould come away with
the idea that they were very numerous, al-
though he had probably seen every bird on the
property ; and as the keepers trapped three
or four every w^eek, and they always appeared
on the table, the delusion was kept up, and he
would consider Mr. Waterton a most successful
game preserver.
]\Ir. A. Elhs imitated Mi\ Waterton's plan,
and tells us that on 1,400 acres he used to get
six or eiglit brace of pheasants in a day. This
admission seems sufficiently to condemn the sys-
tem. They must have been nearly extinct before a
gun was fired. Let anyone watch five pheasants
feeding in a ten-acre field, and ask himself if a
pheasant to every two acres is not the minimum
i
THE PHEASANT. 165
one migiit expect. Then this 1,400 acres would
produce 700 birds a year. If the farmer is
protected a Httle at seed time, the breeding
stock to produce this number will do him no
harm. They would be his friends, for, as we
have before quoted, 444 grubs of the crane
fly were found in the crop of one pheasant;
and with those pests, rabbits, ferreted down
till they were only numerous enough to feed the
foxes, and hares only plentiful enough to show
sport with hounds and greyhounds, we should
hear no more of the damage done by game to
the crops.
But then, these fourfooted creatures are kept
up to show sport by keepers who cannot show
birds in sufficient numbers to swell the total
to so many hundred head ; and who really cares
to pull trigger at a rabbit while the cock phea-
sants are sailing by fast and furiously in Decem-
ber ? And what sportsman, asked to a day's
rabbit shooting, which is excellent fun in its
way, has not been pleased to hear that some
166 GAME PEESERVERS AXD BIRD PRESERVERS.
twenty brace of pheasants have unexpectedly
been seen outside the covers ? and he ^vill not
hurry on the less eagerly to try to stop them as
he hears them beginning to rise at the end of
the wood, whether he thinks they found their
way there from Lord A.'s, Avho rears what are
called tame pheasants, or from Mr. B.'s land,
whose pheasants hatch their ow^n eggs.
There are two classes who affect to despise
pheasant shooting — those who know literally
nothincf about it, and those who know a little
too much.
The first of these have probably never
seen a pheasant shot. They visit some of our
noblemen's beautiful ' show places ' in August
perhaps, and they see the keeper feeding hun-
dreds of pheasants which come at his whistle.
They fancy the same thing goes on in the
shooting season, and that the sportsmen stand
and fire into these flocks of birds promiscuously,
and they write to the papers with this idea
running in their heads.
THE PHEASANT. 167
The second class are those who cannot hit
them ; and not to be able to shoot a tame phea-
sant is so provoking that they ' pooh-pooh '
the whole thing ; and they often also do not
get asked to try, and that is more galling still.
For one man who can drop a brace of pheasants
where the trees are high and with the wind
blowing a little, and take his spare gun from the
loader and drop a brace more, there are three
who cannot; and many men who have stood for
big game in Indian jungles and acquitted them-
selves creditably and who shoot well over dogs,
do not shine at this sport, though they hold
their own pretty well.
But it is the gentlemen who pick their shots
on the ' never miss ' principle, who kill seven
birds Avhere one of the Hurlingham pigeon
shooters would drop twenty-one (though he
would certainly miss a certain number of shots
in doing this), that the owner of the preserves
least likes to see ; and as he watches, on some
occasion, bird after bird glide by into the ene-
168 GA^IE PEESERYERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
mies' country, a little too far off, or going a little
too fast to suit liis friend, lie makes a mental
resolution to remember to forget to invite him
next season.
The fact is, that tame-reared pheasants are
exactly as difficult to shoot as wild-bred birds.
Ours always joined the wild birds before
November, and we never found any difference.
It is the place where they have constantly fed
in security, more than the person who feeds
them, which gives them confidence; and the
same birds which would still come to om' feet
in September if we called them at the spot
where they were reared, could not be induced
to come near us if we met them only four
hundred yards off, ' whistled we never so
kindly.'
We are quite sure the pheasants never
suspect the presence of their kind quiet friend
the keeper, among the party of noisy demons
who have invaded then- stronghold. As it is
their nature to do, they hide in the dense cover
THE PHEASANT. 169
as long as possible, and, when obliged to take
wing, fly as fast and far as possible ; and no wild-
bred pheasant can do more.
The reductio ad ahsurdum is generally
possible. To shoot a stag is the height of many
men's ambition. But to stand beside Queen
Ehzabeth and her ladies while with cross-bows
they fired into herds driven close by, killing or
wounding at every shot, w^ould give few people
any gratification.
Wlien royal personages join in any sport,
they are bound to try to excel other perform-
ances. Noblesse oblige. It would not be the
thing to do less, and ' the fierce hght which
beats upon a throne' reveals all always. So
pheasant shooting can be overdone, as when we
read in the papers eleven hundred are shot in a
few hours m France. But when six English
gentlemen have bagged three hundred in some
six hours, although it is a splendid bag, and it
will require a cart and horse to carry it home
(such a serious grievance with some people),
170 GAME rEESERYERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
it has not amounted to eight birds an hour
for each gun, and tliey have no more done
a cruel action than the parish clergyman and
his friend, who, on the most successful 1st
of September they ever remember, once bagged
thirty brace of partridges.
171
CHAPTEE XY.
PHEASANT EEAEIXG.^
Whex we know that with ordinary kick
and good management six hen pheasants in
confinement will produce at least one hundred
birds/ while these six hens left at liberty
would probably produce about eighteen,
one would expect that everyone who likes
to see pheasants on their ground in autumn
would keep at least this number ; but the
supposed difficulty of rearing them deters
many, and the supposed great expense deters
others. They need not cost more than the
same number of chickens. We would not
^ The autlior has never seen Mr. Tegetmeier's -work on
Pheasants. These remarks are entirely the result of his own
experience.
172 GAME rRESERVERS AXD BIRD PRESERVERS.
keep these pheasants in tlie little cages, twelve
feet square, one often sees. Wire netting is
cheap, and a sunny nook in an orchard, or
a corner in a sln'ubbery, is easily enclosed,
where they can have plenty of room ; and
they should be moved on to fresh ground two
or three times a year. To visit these birds
and brino^ them little delicacies is a constant
amusement to ladies and children who are fond
of live pets. They will eat anything poultry
will eat, and the more their food is varied the
better. When we have kept a cock to each
three hens we have hatched eleven out of
thirteen eggs, so we recommend this number.
Others keep a cock to five hens. They will
begin to lay in April, and will lay from twenty-
five to fifty eggs a-piece. We never had a
healthy hen that did not lay.
We were told one year that more than half
of a hundred hens which were enclosed in
twenty large pens had not laid at all. No
doubt, these birds all ate their ess^s. It is
PHEASAIS'T EEARING. 173
one of the very commonest and least suspected
causes of failure, and no cliano-e of food will
prevent their doing this if they once find out
how nice new-laid eggs are.
It arises from curiosity, in the first instance.
Introduce an egg into a pen where the birds
have not begun to lay. They will nearly all
peck at it a httle, and turn it over and over.
If it breaks, and they taste it, they will eat it
shell and all to the last morsel ;• and shortly
afterwards every egg will be watched for, and
totally demolislied, a damp mark on the ground
being the only trace it will leave. These birds
are ruined for that season at any rate. The
cure is to have artificial china eggs made, and
to put several in each pen a week or two before
they begin to lay. They will peck at these at
first ; but pecking a slippery lump of china is so
unsatisfactory an amusement that they soon
take no notice of them.
They cannot tell the real eggs from these
(no more can the man who collects the eo-ss.
174 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
who will often pick tliem up by mistake), and
they will not meddle with them experto crede.
Another little matter, but jci a very hnpor-
tant one, is that they should have plenty of old
mortar or lime in the pens. If this is neglected
the shells of their eggs will be so thin that the
most careful hens will break twenty or twenty-
live per cent, during incubation, while, when
this is attended to, we. have scarcely had one
egg broken. '
Numbers of eggs are spoiled during incu-
bation. An egg requires pure air as much as it
needs heat. There is nothing more unpleasant
than the smell of wild flowers round a pheasant's
nest. It is the common custom to fit up an out-
building with boxes, and fifty or sixty hens are
set in these. Mr. Bailey advises that when they
are taken off to feed they should be tied by the
leg to a peg ; then caught, untied, and put back.
This is better than letting them run twenty
at a time in the outbuilding. Catching them
and putting them on acfain is a scene of wild
PHEASANT REARING. 175
confusion, and the smell in these houses is most
unpleasant. And many of these hens brought
from a distance will sit for a few days, long
enough to spoil the eggs, and then cease to sit,
and it is almost impossible to detect that they
are spoiling the eggs until it is too late.
If we have fifty eggs or two thousand to
hatch, there is one plan we adopt. Each hen
requires a box with a lid, no bottom, and a
•sliding door at one end. This stands in a field
near the keeper's house. The door opens into
a coop made of laths, large enough for the hen
to feed in. We put a sod of turf in the box to
raise it a httle from the ground, and a nest of
very short hay on that. The damp from the
ground is most beneficial to the eggs. They
are then placed as the wild bird places hers.
The hen is brought over-night and put on
hen's eggs in the box. If she goes back of her
own accord after coming ofi* to feed next morn-
ing you may trust her that night with pheasant's
eggs.
176 GAME PEESERVEES AND BIRD PEESEEVEES.
Every morning the keeper opens the lid. If
the hen is wild she will walk off of herself; if
not, he lifts her and puts her through into the
coop, where she finds food, water, and dry
earth. At the end of three quarters of an
hour he has only to draw back each shde and
each hen glides on of herself A hen that does
not go on willingly, or that comes off again, is
on the strike. You detect her at once, and save
the eggs. A double row of tliirty boxes will
hold sixty hens, which will hatch 1,000 eggs.
A keeper will go down and put them all off in
ten minutes ; he can go about other things, and
come and let them all on again in five minutes,
when they have been off a clear three quar-
ters of an hour. It takes a man a whole morn-
ing to feed these hens twenty at a time ; and,
again, a hen never breaks an egg if she walks
on the nest, but often does so when struggling
out of a man's hands. But do not let any
novice forget to shut the door when he puts
the hen off, and to keep her off for the proper
PHEASANT EEARING. 177
time. In our absence once a man let the hens
go back as soon as they had fed, and spoilt
nearly every egg. Eggs must be thoroughly
cooled each day.
Five hundred or a thousand pheasants reared
by hand is a great success, but we are sure the
expense is often double what it need be. We
should hke to know how many hen pheasants
produced the eggs, and how many eggs were
required to hatch these birds, before allowing
that it was really well done. Keepers are not
often inclined to go into these details, and they
seldom put down on paper what eggs they use.
This plan of out-door hatching may be adopted
in many places, though we do not haj)pen to
have seen it, or to have heard it recommended.
We do not think any who try it will go back to
the old plan. We should mention that the slid-
ing door is left open after the hens go on, on
purpose to allow any hen who is getting tired
of the work to show that she is so by coming oiF
a second time ; and they are watched as much
178 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
as possible, and many a whole sitting of eggs
is saved. Yet many men wlio should know
better will keep putting on unwilling hens,
thinking that if the lid of a box is shut, so that
she cannot stand upright, she must sit and hatch
the eggs, until some morning they find them
scattered all about, and the mischief is done.
And we shut the slides at niglit as a protection
from rats, and to prevent any hen coming off
before we feed them, as when they do this the
eggs get cooled twice. We mention these
little matters, because it is attention to these
trifles which makes the difference between suc-
cess and failure.
Hens will occasionally kill every chick as
soon as it is hatched, so watch them with the
first. We have had them kill pheasants and
Hack grouse, and the only brood of red grouse
we hatched were all killed but one. As no other
hen was hatching on that day, we trusted him
to a motherly old turkey who had just begun
to sit, and she was very kind to him for two
PHEASANT EEAEING. 179
days. He was a brave little bird, and had no
intention of dying if he could help it. We
often took him out, and fed him on chopped
eggs and young heather, and he would peck at
it as we held it, and pull till he tumbled back-
wards, and then up and at it again. We put
him after dark under a hen who was hatchino-
pheasants ; but in those two days he had learnt
to love the old turkey, and he knew her gentle
voice, and she missed the httle creature and
called to him ; and he left his warm bed under
the strange hen, clambered over the side of a
high basket, and ventured in the cold and
darkness all across the building to her box, but
he could not get in, and was lying dead close
to it in the morning, and we were sorry for
him.
The young pheasants must be put out the
day after they are hatched. Coops are cheaply
made, and we use two for each hen, putting
the empty one a few inches in front of the
other in wet and stormy weather. It prevents
2s- 2
180 GAME PRESEEVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
it being blown over, and the birds feed without
getting chilled. In fine weather it is drawn
back three feet, but for the first two or three
days close-fitting boards must join these coops,
or the newly hatched pheasants mil stray away
and be lost.
Plenty of keepers can rear nearly every
bird, but there is generally a mystery kept up
about it. If ants' eggs can be procured they
are easily reared ; but ladies and children do
not attempt it, as they fancy it is necessary to
feed them at dayhght. We have constantly
proved this to be quite needless. We put
down their breakfast the last tiling at night in
the empty coop. They find this when they
wake hungry soon after dayhght, and are ready
for a second meal at eight o'clock. We allow
each twenty-five birds an average of six hard-
boiled eggs a day, mixing them every week
with Indian meal, oatmeal, and boiled rice in
larger proportions, and giving ants' eggs after
each meal. If milk is plentiftil the eggs will
PHEASANT REAEIXG. 181
go mucli farther if made into custard. When
six weeks old they will do well enough with-
out the eggs; and, managed in this way, we
know two children, aged eleven and nine,
who can rear forty or fifty pheasants without
any assistance. Ants' eggs are best collected
in a zinc bucket with a close-fitting lid,
and this should be filled with water for a
good many hours before they are given to the
birds, or the ants will sting them so about the
legs and eyes that they will be afraid to come
near them. In August they will find their
way into the corn-fields ; and, if they get good
picking on the stubbles, perhaps boiled pota-
toes and raisins are as good things as you can
put down to keep them near home. When
reared in small numbers of 150 or so, they will
be found to do better if put in separate lots of
not more than fifty together.
Bh'ds of the same age being together the
smaller ones do not get robbed by the older
birds, and they all catch so many more insects
182 GAME PRESERVERS AKD BIRD PRESERVERS.
wlien in different fields, or different corners of a
large field.
You will see but little of them after Sep-
tember, and in the briUiant cock pheasant who
comes straight at you on a winter's day, at the
rate of a thousand miles an hour, cro^viug
defiance all the time, you will no more recog-
nise the brown bright-eyed little bird which
used to feed at your feet, than he will recognise
in you, as you so wickedly try to stop Mm with
both barrels, the amiable biped who used to
throw him ants' eggs in the summer mornings.
And whether you succeed, and he finds his
way to your friends' tables, or you fail, and he
finds his way to your neighbours' woods, per-
haps to have another year of happy hfe, the
game has been fairly played out between you.
Some writers seem to wish pheasants were ex-
terminated. We think that the more which
are reared in England the better for those who
like to see them, those who like to shoot them,
and those who like to eat them ; and most of
PHEASANT REAEING. 183
the people we know belong to one or the other
of these classes. And surely the more that are
hatched the better for the pheasants them-
selves. Whether a pheasant Hves six months
or six years there exists no happier bird. Can
it be ignorance of the natural history of foxes
and pheasants which makes so clever a writer
as Mr. Hughes advocate their extermination, in-
advocating the abolition of field sports ? And
he does this, he states, on the grounds of hu-
manity on account of what they sometimes-
suffer when hunted or shot. ' Save us from our
friends ! ' must be these creatures' cry. He
would act more logically, we think, if he advo-
cated the extermination of the human race on
account of what so many suffer when they die
of such diseases as ' cholera.'
And he has another reason — ' So many men
are imprisoned because they steal pheasants.'
But, as has been often observed in answer to this,
argument, we do not close our butchers' shops
lest the hungry hundreds in our towns should be
184 GAME PRESERYEES AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
induced to steal their contents ; and when sheep-
steahng was common, it was not suggested that
the proper cure was for farmers to cease to keep
sheep. Would not ]\ir. Hughes do more to
elevate the moral standard of his listeners when
he is lecturing the working classes, if he taught
them to admire our beautiful pheasants, instead
of almost insinuating that if landowners will
encourage these birds they can hardly be sup-
posed to resist the temptation of carrying them
off at night and selling them to some unprin-
cipled poulterer for hahP their real value ?
185
CHAPTEE XYI.
THE WOOD-PIGEOIs" AND HOUSE-SPARKOW.
The wood-pigeon and tile house-sparrow, two
birds differing in their habits as widely as pos-
sible, are the only two birds whose numbers
it would seem desirable to reduce. The first-
named bird is, except, we think, by one or two
witnesses, universally condemned; but several
find plenty to say in defence of the bold little
sparrow.
Few people have any idea how enormously
the wood-pigeon has increased in numbers in
the last thirty years. Mr. Scott Skirving, a
gentleman who farms 800 acres of land in the
East Lothians, gives a great deal of informa-
tion about them, and his figures are quite
astounding. He tells the Committee: 'Forty
186 GAME PEESERVEES AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
or fifty years ago they Avere very scarce; if
you saw one it was a wonder. Now at almost
every season of the year there are flocks of
wood-pigeons in the East Lothians and the
adjoining comities. I would estimate a flock
at about 20,000 in number. They do an
enormous amount of evil. They are entirely
graminivorous and vegetable-feeding. Wlien
there is a snowstorm they eat the whole of
the tops of the tm-nips, and leave them ex-
posed to the frost ; but in the spring they do
the most damage. They fill their crops twice
a day with the clover plant, packing it as
large as a cricket ball. Then when the tur-
nips are singled they pull them out, and ^vhen
the corn is ripening they settle in the fields in
flocks, and trample it down with their weight.
We have an association for killing them, and
pay for about 25,000 in East Lothian ; but
that is a mere fraction of what is killed. They
sell for Qd. each. They are very good food.'
Mr. Scott Skirving attributes their increase
THE WOOD-PIGEON AND HOUSE-SPAEEOW. 187
principally to the improved cultivation of the
farms. ' Formerly there was no food for the
wood -pigeon in the winter time ; but when
the red clover became common it gave them
food, as did the turnip-top, all the year round.
I have no doubt we get large importations of
these birds from the centre of Germany, and
they never go back.'
He also attributes it to the decrease of birds
of prey ; but no numbers of these could now
make any sensible impression on such count-
less hosts. And he states : ' One hard winter
I had a field of rape, and I allowed everyone
to shoot them who could, and I have counted
12,000 birds m one week, and yet they ate
the whole of the crop ; none of it was saved.'
We wish the size of this field had been
stated. At 6d. each, these birds were worth
300Z., which would be some slight compensa-
tion for the loss.
But even the wood-pigeon has one friend.
Mr. John Cordeaux, who farms 700 acres in
188 GAME PRESERYERS Als^D BIRD PRESERVERS.
Nortli Lincolnshire, would not like it de-
stroyed, 'on account of the enormous amount
of noxious seeds it picks up ; ' and he mentions
the names of many weeds whose seeds he
has found in its crop. The Eev. Mr. Morris
beheves large numbers come to Scotland from
the north of Em-ope, and that it does some
good. But surely the fact that a change in
om' system of cultivation should have caused
such an enormous increase in the numbers
of such a beautiful bird opens a wide field
for reflection. We must be very far off
from knowing at present in what numbers
many other birds would exist if. we under-
stood and attended to their wants in winter.
For now, ' every five or six miles throughout
the country you come on a flock of 10,000
wood-pigeons, where thirty years ago they
were quite rare.'
The farmers in the East Lothians are
quite right to put a price upon its eggs ; it
is spreading in all directions. JMr. E. Gray
THE WOOD-PIGEON AKD HOUSE-SPARROW. 189
says : ' It is totally unknown in the Western
Hebrides.' We have repeatedly shot it lately
in the extreme west of Argyllshire.
The house-sparrow is so clearly, as the
Eev. Mr. Tristram describes him, like the
rat, a parasite on man, that no ordinary rules
apply to him. His motto may be said to be —
De I'audace, encore de I'audace, toujours de I'audace.
He robs the wild beasts of their food in the
Zoological Gardens, the poor man's pig and
the rich man's pheasants. He will not starve
while we have a fowl alive, nor die of cold
while there is a warm hayrick in the countr}^
The cat is perhaps his only dangerous enemyy
and she makes no impression on his numbers.
He is about the last bird the so-called
sparrow-hawk is hkely to kill often, as he
keeps so near our houses. If his numbers^
are to be reduced, man must reduce them
himself; but whether he ought to do this is
quite a vexed question.
190 GAME PKESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
We can only quote some of the arguments
advanced for and against him. Opinions seem
pretty evenly balanced.
We believe he drives away other birds,
such as the chaffinch and yellowhammer.
Netting them in winter is quite a legitimate
way of destroying them, and if they are shot
from a trap next morning they will have a
chance to escape. A lad of sixteen who can
stop nine out of twelve at twenty yards' rise
will be able to handle a gun to some purpose
when he goes out to our colonies ; and all boys
cannot have game to practise at.
Mr. Champion Eussell hates the sparrow.
< Their crops are full of barley and oats, except
when they can get wheat. Then they attack
the green peas in pod. But the chief mischief
is eating the green wheat when it is pulpy.
The juice runs out of their mouths like milk
when they are shot. A farmer often loses 20/.
on a field by them.' This is rather strong
evidence ; yet the very next witness, Mr. H.
THE WOOD-PIGEON AND HOUSE-SPARROW. 191
Meyers, 'would like to see them increase
tenfold.' He exterminated them once, but
blight of various kinds increased so that he
was glad to get them back. And this evidence
is borne out by Mr. Harting, who tells us that
at Baden a price was put on their heads, and
that then the cockchafers increased so that
they were reintroduced at some expense.'
Under one sparrow's nest 1,400 wing-cases of
cockchafers were collected and counted, yet
the stomachs of yomig sparrows are constantly
full of wheat and peas. Mr. Groome NajDier
thinks they do more harm than good. One
hundred stomachs of young sparrows were ex-
hibited in 1865, and there was not five per
cent, which contained insect food.
Mr. Lewis Fytche thinks him most usefiil,
and Mr. Cordeaux that ' the good he does over-
balances the evil;' but he takes their nests as
they turn out other birds.
Mr. C. Eussell thinks ' nearly all evidence
in favour of sparrows is founded on partial ob-
192 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
servation, or is vitiated by the fact that, when
they are killed down, other birds are also exter-
minated.' No doubt this is often true ; and we
would take care to protect plenty of other
birds, which are more strictly insectivorous, be-
fore destroying them. Capital punishment
should be inflicted by man alone. He destroys
so much more mercifully than when creatures
destroy each other.
They soon get used to the report of a gun^
and they will even sit in a tree and continue to
feed while some of their number are being shot.
But the sight of a hawk fills them with terror
from which they do not recover for a long
time.
Although the sparrow has followed the
Eussians in their advance into Siberia, he has
not yet established himself in the west of
Argyllshire. His place round our farms is sup-
plied by a little cloud of chaffinches.
193
CHAPTEE XVII.
HOW TO PRESERVE ALL BIRDS.
All birds require three things: protection
during their breeding season, a home that suits
them, and to be able to procure sufficient food
in winter. If man chooses to provide them
with these blessings, probably the numbers of
most of our birds, from the tomtit to the
black-cock, might be increased to almost any
extent.
We protect them by destroying, with the
help of our gamekeepers, or rather birdkeepers,
the following birds, which destroy them on
every day in the year, or their eggs and young
whenever they can find them : the falcon, the
buzzard, the hen-harrier, the sparrow-hawk,
the merlin, the raven, the crow, the magpie,
o
194 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
and the jay ; while the kestrel and the owl are
under surveillance never to be destroyed unless
detected Jlagi^ante delicto.
Will any reader who has had the patience
to follow us so far, compare this list with the
statements made before the Committee and
quoted in the second chapter, that game-
keepers destroy every bird which is not in the
Game List ?
And one gentleman states that keepers des-
troy ' our principal Avild birds and animals.'
Are these murderers and calmibals our
principal and most valuable wild birds ?
But some writers are never tired of atttack-
ing and misrepresenting field sports and all con-
nected with them. One gentleman last winter
could find no adjective strong enough to express
in one of the newspapers what he thought of
anyone who shot more than a certain number
of pheasants in a day, and he boasted that he
was proof against all arguments. We do think
if he could live for a couple of years as a
HOW TO PRESERVE ALL BIRDS. 195
blackbird lie might alter Lis opinions. The
first year he shall live in the park of a game
preserver. Here he will enjoy perfect happi-
ness. He can warble his sw^eetest songs and
rear his family in peace, and will know no
anxiety except to take care to wake sufficiently
early to secure the early-rising worm. The
following year he shall live in the pleasure-
grounds of a gentleman who is so fond of birds
that he has written a book about them, but
who thinks it wrong to interfere with the
balance of Nature. Here he will see his first
wife killed by a sparrow-hawk, and his second
carried ofi* by a merlin on the day on which
she laid her first eojs:, while three out of the
four young ones he rears by his third will be
killed by a cat as soon as they leave the nest ;
and on some occasion he will only save his own
life from the same creature by the sacrifice of
his tail. We do think he would begin to
reahse who were birds' friends, and afterwards,
2
196 GAME PRESERVERS AXD BIRD PRESERVERS.
instead of writing these letters, we should see
his name in the advertisement column of the
same newspaper as the inventor of a patent
cat trap.
And we also kill the mountain fox, the
wild, or vagrant, wandering homeless cat, the
polecat, stoat, and weasel, and the rat and the
hedgehog ; and when none of these creatures
infest our mountains, woods, and fields we
know that our beautiful and useful wild birds
can breed in peace.
A home tliat suits birds is not always easily
procured, and here Mr. Waterton was far in
advance of his age. His protection of the
poor persecuted water-fowl was worthy of all
imitation. We are sorry for these birds, which
must recede before man. The command, ' Let
the dry land appear,' which suits him so well,
is their destruction.
But he need not hunt them off every bit of
water on which they are ever seen. If he
would systematically protect them he would be
HOW TO PRESERVE ALL BIRDS. 197
well repaid. There is not a pond of half-an-
acre in extent which would not always hold
ducks if kept quiet, and if a httle shelter was
provided. A screen of bitter osiers would
sometimes make all the difference, or a belt of
larch trees, shutting out the view of some pub-
lic path. On some fine pieces of water wild
fowl of various sorts breed every year, and
their young are taken as soon as hatched, to
the last bird, by large pike which are far too
cunning to take any bait, and which often can-
not be netted on account of the weeds.
This is a serious evil. We offer the follow-
ing suggestion for what it is worth, not having
tried it. We would hatch some ducks early in
the year, and before putting them on the
water we would sew up in a bit of waterproof
and fasten on the back of each securely with
some elastic, strychnine enough to kill a
man. As these packets should not be labelled
poison, the pike would probably not notice
them, and perhaps Mr. Buckland could tell us
198 GAME PRESEEYERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
if they would be likely to require any more
ducks out of our next brood.
]\Ir. Waterton set also an admirable example
in providing liouse accommodation for many
sorts of birds, whicli have great trouble in find-
ing suitable habitations. He may be said to
have originated the plan of making model
lodging-houses for owls, starhngs, &c. &c.
He is imitated by Mr. A. Ellis, who states that
he fitted up chambers artificially in the hole of
a hollow elm-tree, and that a kestrel, a stock-
dove, and two pairs of starlings all hatched ofi*
their young in this one chamber. Surely this
old tree must be an interesting object to anyone
fond of natural history.
The Eev. Mr. Morris saw at Walton Hall
another hollow tree in which a pair of owls, a
pair of jackdaws, and a pair of redstarts bred,
and all these birds entered by one hole. We
should like to see these model lodging-houses
common on every estate. They would soon
find tenants, for old and useless trees are so
HOW TO PRESERVE ALL BIRDS. 199
generally cut down now, that all the birds
which like to build in holes are at their wits'
ends to know where to go.
Perhaps one of the most useful birds in the
world, the starling, has increased more than
almost any bird. He is now common in the
west of Argyllshire, where he was unknown,
and he has great difficulty in finding holes to
build in.
The necessity of finding nesting accommo-
dation for birds is noticed by Mr. MuUer. Our
system of cultivation finds home and food for
an ever-increasing host of insects, but the birds
which would live upon them are driven away
by the destruction, in so many places, of all the
trees and hedgerows. The useless old hedge-
rows will never return, but we do think a
system of planting occasional strips wiU be
adopted. These would be screens from certain
winds, a cover for pheasants, and a secure
hiding-place for our insect-destroying friends ;
and thinnings of these, if planted with such
200 GAJME PRESERVERS AXD BIRD PRESERVERS.
trees as the larch, would make some retm^n in
value for the ground they would occupy. They
would wonderfully improve the appearance of
the country. Immense tracts of land without a
tree or bush, however carefully cultivated, are
not our idea of an Enghsh landscape.
But protect and plant for our birds as we
will, without food in winter they will never
become very numerous. They get through a
mild winter pretty well, but in a severe winter
' they die by millions.' Perhaps nine-tenths of
the blackbirds and thrushes die. After one
severe winter, Mr. J. Eccarius noticed that
these birds and the robin had become nearly
extinct.
And we let them die at our very doors of
hunger, and except to the poor little robin who
will come and ask om^ children to pity and
feed him sometimes, we never throw them a
scrap.
Poor little creatures ! They must find their
Sorrows, crown of sorrows, in remembering liappier things.
HOW TO PRESERVE ALL BIRDS. 201
Can this world, with its iron-boimcl icy covering
and its few short hours of daylight, be the same
place which they remember where they found
delicious food at every step, and where the long
summer day was not long enough to sing of
all. their happiness in ?
They could bear the cold but not the hun-
ger in addition. So some evening, feehng fainter
than usual, they creep into some little sheltered
corner and die. Every garden should have its
table for the birds in winter, and children take
a dehght in watching them come each morning
for their daily meal. All the birds that stay
the winter with us can be kept ahve with such
a httle help from man.
The cheapest rice, a httle Indian meal, and
a few pounds of suet or liver chopped up occa-
sionally in hard weather, will save the lives of
scores, and it is only thoughtlessness which
prevents these things being supplied, for but
few living in the country would grudge the
expense.
202 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
We should like to see insect-eat in 2^ and
weed- destroying birds swarming in onr gar-
dens and fields, and wild-foAvl breeding in
peace on every pond ; and as we are now
largely importing very inferior game birds for
food, we think our modern naturalists would
do us better service if they would tell us how
to make our grouse, pheasants, and partridges
ten times as numerous as they are, so that they
misfht be common on most men's tables instead
of constantly advising us to feed other birds
and beasts with the fiesh and eggs of the few
we still possess.
If edible birds are to be eaten they must be
killed, and this leads us to the question of what
is the most merciful way to kill them. We have
no hesitation in saying that the most merciful
way is to shoot them. Most of them die in the
air and never know what hurts them, while the
few wounded are the exception which proves the
rule. Numbers of people if they heard that a
gentleman had had his woods surrounded with
HOW TO PKESERVE ALL BIRDS. 203
nets and the pheasants all driven into them to
struggle screaming with terror until their turn
came to have their necks broken, would think
he had acted with great humanity, while we are
sure that our very tamest pheasants suffer more
when caught occasionally to have their wings
cut than if they were shot. The mere hand-
ling a wild bird causes terror, and we used
even to have our guinea-fowls shot in pre-
ference to hunting and catching them.
Many ladies rear numbers of turkeys and
chickens, and tliough it is well known that their
superfluous stock are killed and some of them
sold, no one thinks of accusing these ladies of
cruelty. Yet it is a far more miserable thing to
watch a poor turkey tied up by the legs bleed-
ing to death than to see a hundred birds shot
flying. And the wounded even do not suffer
as some suppose. Let anyone observe the ex-
pression in a bird's eye as his retriever brings
him, carrying him ' tenderly as though he loved
him,' as Sir Isaac Walton advised his disciples
204 GAME PRESERVERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
to handle the young frog they were about to
impale on their hook. It is much more intense
astonishment than agony which it expresses.
The shock seems to have stunned its faculties.
It says plainly, ' Where am I ? what has hap-
pened ? ' And a tap on the head ends its suf-
ferings.
As birds cannot extract the shot, those hit
in the body must die soon or perfectly recover.
We remember once seeing a bad shot ap-
parently miss two cock pheasants, which we
marked into a little patch of gorse. On going
to beat them out they were both picked up
dead.
Then sportsmen are directly accused of
finding pleasure in inflicting pain and suffering.
So, if it could be revealed to us that birds
do not suffer at all when shot, but in a happy
ecstasy pass to another existence (and if, as an
American poet, writes —
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream,
HOW TO PRESERVE ALL BIRDS. 205
for the sake of the argument we can imagine
this), should we cease to pursue them, or should
we find no pleasure in shooting them ?
Does anyone honestly believe for a moment
that this would be the case ?
But, on the other hand, if guns could be so
improved as to certainly kill or wound every
bird we shot at, we are perfectly certain that
their destruction would lose all interest, and
but few would ever follow them.
It is the exhibition of skill and the achieving
what is difficult wliich gives the charm to
shooting, and we find an additional charm
when the pursuit of game leads us to wander
for days among the most beautiful scenes in
nature, and taxes our physical powers to the
uttermost.
It is one of the healthiest signs of the age
that as wealth and luxury increase, and with
these the possibihty of leading a life of perfect
ease and indolence, in the Anglo-Saxon race a
love of all manly exercises seems to increase in
206 GAME PRESER^^ERS AND BIRD PRESERVERS.
an equal proportion. Among Orientals you can
often tell a man's income by his weight. As
soon as he can afford to sit still he seldom takes
any exercise. One of the Eastern princes, on
being taken to Almack's, could not understand
why we did not make our servants do the
dancinsf while we looked at them.
o
There is not an enterprising manufacturer
in England who has amassed a large fortune
who may not feel sure, however little he may
happen to care for rod and gun himself, but
that some of his descendants will be spending
the splendid means he will leave at their dis-
posal in ransacking every corner of the known
globe in pursuit of sport.
Pigeon-shooting is considered the most
cruel form of shooting, but even here people
make a mistake. Possibly no such blessing
could have been invented for the pigeons as the
revival of this sport, as they are now breeding
in happy hundreds where but few used to exist.
HOW TO PRESERVE ALL BIRDS. 207
for it did not pay to keep them only to find
their way into pies.
But it is so ridiculously easy to shoot a
tame pigeon. So different from killing a wild
mountain grouse ! In very remote parts of
Scotland where grouse have never been shot at,
we have occasionally found them as tame as the
boobies which the sailors knock on tlie head in
the South Sea Islands. On three different
occasions we remember throwing our hats at
grouse to make them fly as they persisted in
running, scolding, and chattering, and jerking
their wings and tails in their most impertinent
manner under our feet and under the dogs'
noses, and these were all full-grown, strong
birds. Young squeakers always lie hid until
almost trodden on and then fly as far as they
can. One of these parties of unsophisticated
grouse so scandahsed a very excellent dog who
found them at some distance from us, that we
saw him get up, turn tail, and slink away, and
208 GAME PRESERVERS AXD BIRD PRESERVERS.
take up his point again fifty yards off, waiting
for us to come and advise him how to act
under such unusual circumstances. Which was
the easy bird to shoot? One of these grouse, or
the tame pigeon, which is out of the trap you
least expect, and you verily believe before the
string was pulled, and is away with a dash and
twist which an Irish snipe might envy ; and,
though you have the best gun in England in
your hand, and though you would go home a
richer man by 500/. if you could, you simply
cannot shoot him ?
Eightly understood and properly carried
out, men's dominion over the beasts of the
field and the fowls of the air may be called a
new dispensation for them, and it is an infi-
nitely more merciful one than the original state
of things under which they suffer and struggle
for existence, while allowed to destroy each
other on every day in the year.
When he refuses to interfere with 'the
balance of Nature,' man wraps his talent in a
HOW TO PRESERVE ALL BIRDS. 209
napkin, and live creatures benefit but little by
his appearance upon this earth, and he derives
but little profit from them. It is greatly to be
regretted, both for the sake of the birds and for
mankind's own sake, that every man, in what-
ever part of the world he may dwell, should not
be a bird preserver, and consequently a game
preserver.
liOSDON : FEINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STBEET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
^
